Connie Chung did not have an easy time having to compete with Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer more than 20 years ago.
On an episode of Los Angeles Magazine‘s The Originals podcast, posted on Thursday, Dec. 17, Chung, 74, spilled the tea about a past rivalry with her fellow news anchors at ABC News’ 20/20. Chung worked as a reporter and co-host for the program between 1998 and 2000.
“When I went to ABC News I joined with both Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer there and I thought, ‘Oh, this is gonna be great. It’ll be three women who get along,'” Chung said on the podcast. “I was so naïve and stupid.”
“When I got to ABC, both Dianne and Barbara were in the same sort of arena of trying to get these big interviews,” she continued. “So when I tried to go after them, I was told I could not, that Barbara and Dianne were the only ones who could compete for the interview, and I had to stand down. I said, ‘Really?'”
Interviewer Andrew Goldman compared trying to compete with Walters and Sawyer to going into a “shark tank,” to which Chung said, “I was always playing a game of Whack-a-Mole. I popped my head up and one of them would have a hammer and go whack, and put me down back in my little hole.”
