Barbara Walters left the spotlight on a high note. “I do not want to appear on another program or climb another mountain,” she said in 2014 (via CNBC). “I want instead to sit on a sunny field and admire the very gifted women — and OK, some men, too — who will be taking my place.”
In the years since her retirement, sources say that she struggled with dementia and refused to have anyone witness her in an unpleasant state. “Barbara suffers from exhaustion and fatigue, as well as anxiety and agitation,” a source told Radar Online. “She’s very frail and spends a great deal of the day napping!” Another insider dished, “Barbara is fading a little more every day. She’s close to the end and her team is scrambling to manage affairs just the way Barbara would want them.”
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But given the case, her closest friends in the industry still made it a point to reach out. “I heard that she’s in a place of not doing great, and I just talked to Sherri Shepherd about it and we’re sending some cards over to her,” Jenny McCarthy told Us Weekly in 2020. “That woman is a juggernaut that’ll just keep going no matter what.” Whoopi Goldberg made sure to give her a shoutout on her last birthday, too. “To the one and only Barbara Walters, who had a birthday yesterday,” she said on “The View” (via E! News). “We wanna say, 27 never looked so good!”
