One of the many indignant tweets:
I wonder how Ms. Couric would feel if someone cast aside her accomplishments & boiled her down to genitalia?
And the media scorn was equally ferocious. BuzzFeed called my interview with Carmen “invasive” and “cringeworthy,” while Slate said it was “tone-deaf.”
Holy hell—I knew I’d been a bit clumsy, but I had no idea how deeply offensive my comments were. I was so embarrassed.
Eventually I got over it, and I have Laverne Cox to thank. A year and a half later, she asked me to present her with her 2015 Fashion Media Award. In her speech, she said I’d allowed myself to be “teachable” and that I’d “demonstrated what ally-ship looks like” when I invited her back to the show and asked what conversations we needed to be having.
Two years later, I used the incident as a springboard for my documentary Gender Revolution. I explored what it is to be trans, chronicling the journey of, among others, a 5-year-old girl and a bullied teen, as well as a 70-year-old woman after she’d gotten gender-confirmation surgery. I learned so much and invited viewers to learn along with me. A grateful mother stopped me at the airport to tell me how helpful the documentary had been to her and her family as they sought to understand her trans son’s experience.
MEANWHILE, BACK AT Katie, there were other speed bumps along the road to sunny, funny, and smart. Like my conversation with Joan Rivers. Can we talk?
Joan was a New York legend. I’d had dinner at her ornate apartment in the East Sixties—French Provincial, with heavy drapes and brocade everything, the spoils of a very successful life. I wanted to do an interview that got beyond the shticky one-liners she was known for and delve into her emotional, interior self. In the documentary Piece of Work, she’d shared her terror of facing an empty calendar, and to be honest, that reminded me of me.
The producer assured me that nothing was off-limits. So I decided to explore her decision to get plastic surgery. I heard the studio audience gasp.
“I want to look pretty. Don’t you want to look pretty?” she said sharply, fixing me with those piercing eyes. （The exchange didn’t make the final cut.）
In her dressing room afterward, she unloaded on our producers. “Who does she think she is? She’s on her knees blowing 14-year-olds.” （I guess she hadn’t heard about the Brooks breakup.）
I wish it hadn’t happened. Joan had been so kind to me after Jay died, sending me a note, widow to widow, that read in part:
You are the star of your movie or play and hard as it may be for you to believe this at this time, there is a glorious, golden life ahead for you and your kids. Xoxox, Joan Rivers
Less than two years after our interview, she died unexpectedly. It was our last encounter. The whole thing remains a profound bummer to this day.
But I am happy to say there were many great episodes and memorable moments: Stoic Robert De Niro choking up during an interview with the cast of Silver Linings Playbook. Sam Berns, who would die at 17 of progeria, a rare genetic disease that causes children to age at warp speed, being presented with a game ball from his beloved New England Patriots （Sam blew me away）。 Ninety-year-old Irving Fradkin, an optometrist from Fall River, Massachusetts, who started a grass-roots scholarship fund, flanked by a dozen grateful kids among the hundreds of thousands he’d sent to college.
Other episodes brought me back to my news roots, like Hurricane Sandy, which sent me all over Staten Island to hear the stories of shell-shocked residents. One woman whose husband and daughter had been violently swept away by the floodwaters agreed to come on the show.
Then there was Sandy Hook. It happened on a Friday afternoon. Two producers and I jumped in a car and headed to Newtown, Connecticut, and attended a prayer vigil that night.
Jackie and Mark Barden lived there with their children, James, Natalie, and, until Friday, their darling, redheaded 7-year-old, Daniel. When I went back to Newtown on Sunday, I nervously knocked on their door. Someone opened it and I was surprised they invited me in.
There were at least 40 people inside, including Jackie’s nine siblings, their spouses and kids. A fire crackled in the fireplace and the Christmas tree was up. As gently as I could, I asked Jackie and Mark, “Do you think you could talk to me about what happened?”
I was guided to the sofa in the family room. James, who must have been about 11, had tears streaming down his face throughout the interview—an extraordinary embodiment of pain and one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen. That uneasy dichotomy that every reporter knows, wanting to be respectful but also wanting to capture profound human drama in its purest, rawest form…I hadn’t felt it this viscerally since Columbine.