The Most Infamous And Controversial Interviews Of All Time

Facing impeachment, President Richard Nixon resigned from office following the Watergate scandal, and President Ford pardoned him from having to stand trial. Thus, the American public had never had a chance to see the case closed, to determine whether Nixon was in fact guilty, though he insisted in the two years after his resignation that he wasn't. 

But in 1977, promoting his memoir, Nixon accepted a handsome price to do a series of interviews with British television host David Frost. Considering Frost a soft and safe interviewer, Nixon likely thought the series would be an easy way to rehab his image and tell his side of the story. However, Frost had other plans. He enlisted the help of author James Reston, Jr., and the two spent ten months planning an interview that doubled as a prosecutorial interrogation. 

As it was the first time Nixon had been publicly interviewed about the events of Watergate, 45 million Americans tuned into the interview (broken into four 90-minute segments) where Frost cornered Nixon, eventually getting him to confess: 

I let down my friends… I let down the country. I let down our system of government, and the dreams of all those young people that ought to get into government but now think it too corrupt… I let the American people down, and I have to carry that burden with me the rest of my life. 

The 1995 BBC interview with Princess Diana was doubly controversial- not only did the princess admit to having an affair, her mental health issues, and her estranged marriage, but reporter Martin Bashir also falsified bank statements showing a newspaper's payment to a member of Princess Diana's brother's staff to secure the interview. 

When asked about her marriage with the future king of England, Diana surprisingly responded: 

[Bulimia] was a symptom of what was going on in my marriage. I was crying out for help, but giving the wrong signals, and people were using my bulimia as a coat on a hanger. They decided that was the problem - Diana was unstable… 

[I was aware that Prince Charles had started seeing Camilla Parker Bowles again], but I wasn't in a position to do anything about it… A woman's instinct is a very good one… There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded. 

We had struggled to keep it going, but obviously, we'd both run out of steam. And in a way, I suppose, [the legal separation] could have been a relief for us both - that we'd finally made our minds up. But my husband asked for the separation, and I supported it. 

In 2002, Diane Sawyer accused Whitney Houston and her husband, Bobby Brown, of regularly partaking in recreational drugs, specifically crack cocaine. The interview sparked controversy among Houston's fans the moment it aired and continued to spark outrage after her passing. 

Most notably, the singer's fans felt that Sawyer's interrogation tactics were unfair and that the interviewer intentionally tried to humiliate Houston by offering her a photo where she was visibly thin, intending to draw a response from the artist. Houston did respond, but it wasn't how Sawyer expected. 

After pushing Houston by accusing her of having anorexia and bulimia, Sawyer moved the questioning to the topic of drug use. As she forcefully questioned Houston regarding crack use, Houston unflinchingly retaliated: 

Yeah, my bones, yeah. I'm 5'7 and thin. I can understand what you mean…. I can believe what you feel. I can believe that. But do you know? Do you really know?…

Now I'll grant you, I've partied. But there have been times when I know I've been going through a lot of emotional stress. And my eating habits were awful…

Let's get one thing straight. Crack is cheap. I've made too much money to ever smoke crack. Let's get that straight. Okay? We don't do crack. We don't do that. Crack is whack.

After fourteen years of refusing interviews, Michael Jackson finally sat down in 1993 to do an exclusive show with Oprah Winfrey. Meant to be candid, the two agreed not to discuss the questions that Winfrey planned to ask Jackson while filming on stage. As the interview became increasingly personal, many fans believed that the talk show host had taken things too far. 

First, she questioned Jackson about his skin pigmentation: 

Are you bleaching your skin? Is your skin lighter because you don't like being Black? 

Jackson's voice trembled as he responded: 

As I know of, there's no such thing as skin bleaching… I have never seen it. I don't know what it is... This is the situation — I have a skin disorder that destroys the pigmentation of the skin. It's something I cannot help. But when people make up stories that I don't want to be who I am, it hurts me.

When Oprah asked if the pop star was still a virgin, she had taken the conversation one step too far. Jackson responded: 

How could you [ask that]? I'm a gentleman… It's something that's private. I mean, it shouldn't be spoken about openly. Call me old-fashioned if you want but for me, that's very personal. I'm embarrassed. 

Years after the interview aired, fans wondered how Oprah would have reacted if the same questions had been fired off at her in an unscripted interview. 

President Clinton's lasting legacy of 1998 was his highly-publicized affair with one of his interns, Monica Lewinsky, a relationship that he initially denied but was eventually impeached for after he admitted his extra-marital affair on live television. 

Though the accusations began because of recorded conversations between Lewinsky and her colleague Linda Tripp discussing the relationship, Lewinsky remained silent throughout President Clinton's trial. When she finally opened up to Barbara Walters in 1999, her response wasn't as remorseful as the media anticipated: 

There are some days that I regret that the relationship ever started and there are some days that I just regret that I ever confided in Linda Tripp. 

In regard to her experience being questioned in a room full of FBI agents, Lewinsky revealed: 

Oh, I was, I was petrified... I have never been so afraid in my entire life. I wanted to die. I wanted to kill everybody in the room... I was just very scared. 

The former White House intern-turned employee also reflected on her feelings toward President Clinton: 

Sometimes I have warm feelings, sometimes I'm proud of him still, and sometimes I hate his guts. And, um, he makes me sick.

Throughout his extensive career, seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong denied ever using performance-enhancing drugs to win races. When the cyclist finally admitted that he had cheated during an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Armstrong only produced a limited confession and took partial blame for his illicit actions. 

While he confessed to doping from 1999-2005, he denied allegations that he bullied teammates into taking steroids with him and bribed the International Cycling Union, along with a Swiss laboratory, to hide his positive drug tests. When Oprah asked Armstrong if he had ever used steroids to win his tour titles, the cyclist simply responded: "Yes." However, he didn't stop there: 

I view this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times… I didn't invent the [doping] culture and I didn't try to stop the culture... and the sport is now paying the price of that and I'm sorry for that. I didn't have access to anything else that nobody else did…

The truth isn't what I said. And now it's gone... this story was so perfect for so long…. I was a bully. In the sense I tried to control the narrative and if I didn't like what someone said... I tried to control that. [I] said “that's a lie, they're liars…" Those tours ... I knew, I knew I was going to win… I deserve this… I look at that clip [of me denying accusations] and think, “Look at that arrogant prick.” That's not me today…

These were people who believed in me, who believed me, and they have every right to feel betrayed. I'll spend the rest of my life trying to earn back trust and apologize to people.