Maine Born & Educated ABC News Star: ‘BFF Barbara Walters Died Broken-Hearted Over Daughter’

By Ted Cohen/Patch com

A shocking new tell-all documentary on famed TV personality Barbara Walters’ lowest moments features a Lewiston native who was a network star in her own right.

Cynthia McFadden, born in Lewiston and graduate of Bowdoin College, was best friends with Walters.

In a new documentary on Walters, McFadden reveals her friend’s depression over the troubled relationship she had with her adopted daughter.

McFadden was also adopted so has special insights into Walters’ relationship with her daughter Jackie.

“She’d tell everyone, ‘I so admire your relationship with your children,’ ” McFadden tells People magazine in the latest issue, referring to Walters. “She was very regretful about her family life. It was something she felt like she couldn’t fix. So that was really tugging at her.”

The upcoming Hulu documentary “Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything” (June 23), explores Walters' rise to the top, becoming the first-ever female nightly news anchor as well as the undisputed queen of the celebrity sit-down interview, according to the magazine.

The Hulu doc also examines the toll her demanding career took on her personal life.

Walters turned to adoption in 1968 after three miscarriages. Once she adopted daughter Jackie she said she had everything she could dream of - a family and a fabulous career.

But her troubled relationship in later years with Jackie due to the many hours that Walters had been away from home brought her great frustration, according to McFadden.

"Barbara was always flying somewhere, interviewing someone," McFadden says. “And it's not like she could have brought her young daughter along for the ride.”

McFadden says it was difficult for Walters to relate to her adolescent daughter, who wasn't as career-driven as her mother: "She couldn't understand someone like Jackie, who wasn't racing to the top.”

McFadden was an anchor and correspondent for ABC News who co-anchored Nightline, and occasionally appeared on ABC News special Primetime. She was with ABC from 1994 to 2014 and then NBC until last year.

She was born in Lewiston in 1956, graduated from Edward Little High School in Auburn and later went to Bowdoin, from which she received a bachelor of arts with high honors in 1978 before going to Columbia Law School.

Besides being close with Walters, who died in 2022, McFadden was friends with actress Katharine Hepburn, for whose estate McFadden is executor.

McFadden shares an Auburn connection with former U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and is a big supporter of the Olympia Snowe Women's Leadership Institute.

Snowe also graduated Edward Little.