Monica Lewinsky wipes a tear from her eye during an interview with Barbara Walters on ABC News 20/20 in March 1999.The Associated Press
COMEDIAN'S REMORSE
After all these years and all those monologue jabs at public figures, David Letterman has only one regret: That period in the late nineties when he consistently went after Monica Lewinsky.
The 67-year-old talk host was uncharacteristically remorseful earlier this week during his interview with veteran TV journalist Barbara Walters.
For the first time, Letterman admitted that he and his late-night brethren crossed the line in their merciless skewering of the former White House intern accused of having an affair with ex-U.S. president Bill Clinton.
In the unavoidably reflective interview – Letterman is leaving The Late Show next year, while Walters, 84, is retiring from active TV duty this week – the ordinarily caustic host admitted that Lewinsky's recent essay in Vanity Fair magazine rattled him and made him feel guilty.
"I started to feel bad because myself and other people with shows like this made relentless jokes about the poor woman," he told Walters.
And the worst part for Letterman: "She was a kid. She was 21, 22…I feel bad about my role in helping push the humiliation to the point of suffocation."
In the Vanity Fair article, Lewinsky, now 40, complains that the scandal still follows her to this day and has prevented her from getting a job.
At the peak of the Lewinsky imbroglio in 1999, Walters famously interviewed Lewinsky for a broadcast that was watched by a record-breaking 74-million U.S. viewers.
Reverting to regular wiseacre form, Letterman suggested Walters might forego her retirement plans if she had the chance to interview Lewinsky today.
"You would talk to her in a second," he said.
Responded Walters: "I just talked to her. I like Monica. And I felt that she's never had the chance to move on and I hope that she does."
Added Walters: "I asked her what she'd tell her children and she said, 'Mommy made a big mistake.' That's still haunting her."
HELLO AGAIN
Now it can be told: Lionel Richie doesn't much care for his signature song Hello. The singer-songwriter recently admitted that the creative process behind the 1984 hit began with him saying offhandedly to his longtime producer James Anthony Carmichael, "Hello, is it me you're looking for?" Carmichael's response: "He said, 'Finish that song'." Even then, Richie said that penning the full version of the syrupy love ballad didn't come easy. "I actually went in writing this song not like the song, thinking it was corny," he said. "I mean, this is really corny. This is not going to do well. Then by the time I finished the verse, I fell in love with the song again."
Source: CTV News
CASTING CALL
Jamie Foxx has an interesting suggestion on who should play him in a movie of his life: Leonardo DiCaprio. The Oscar-winning actor jokingly made the pitch during a recent interview with a French celebrity fansite. The two actors teamed up in the 2012 feature Django Unchained. In the same interview, Foxx, 46, reflected on what advice he might give a younger version of himself: "I would tell myself to never doubt my talents, stay even more humble and never trust a big butt and a smile," he said.
Source: Us
CAREER PLANNING
Did CBS offer Neil Patrick Harris the job of taking over from David Letterman or didn't they? Earlier this week, the How I Met Your Mother star told radio host Howard Stern that he had a meeting with CBS CEO Les Moonves and CBS Entertainment chairman Nina Tassler in which the pair discussed the possibility of Harris taking over for Letterman or The Late Late Show post held by the soon-to-depart Craig Ferguson. Harris told Stern he turned down both offers: "I think I would get bored of the repetition fast, and the structure of it is so set," said Harris. Moonves, meanwhile, told Bloomberg News that the hosting possibilities came up during the meeting, but nothing was officially offered. "I wouldn't say we didn't talk about it, but he wasn't offered it per se."
Source: Entertainment Weekly
CAT SCRATCH FEVER
Blake Shelton admits it: He's not a cat person. The country star and mentor on The Voice talked about his grudging home life with wife and fellow country singer Miranda Lambert – who has three cats – in a recent interview. "I'm not too big on cats and sometimes I'll say something like that and people get so mad at me," said Shelton. "But the truth is, I don't care if they get mad." What does he have against the feline species? "They're sneaky," said Shelton. "Though to be fair, if they could send a tweet, I'm sure they would say something bad about me."
Source: People
THE WRIGHT STUFF
Robin Wright chose to keep it real when she accepted the role of political power-broker Claire Underwood on House of Cards. The 48-year-old actress says that her unwillingness to get a facelift almost prevented her from getting the role on the Netflix series when David Fincher approached her a few years ago. "I was sitting there going, 'You're 45 and you're not gonna get a facelift'," she said. "I was really considering that stuff, because in Hollywood the pressure's there. You better lift that face and pump those lips and hike those boobs. And I was like, 'I don't want to do that. I'm going to get older. I'm going to have wrinkles!"
Source: People