David Letterman‘s interview skills are legendary, to the point where he’s still hard at work on Netflix years after he left the Late Show and let Stephen Colbert take over. It’s often a clip from Letterman that goes viral when someone dies, which was the case when Regis Philbin died in 2020.
But not every interview Letterman did earns high praise, and we were reminded of that on Saturday when a cringe-worthy interview he did with Lindsay Lohan went viral on Twitter. The video seems to have been passed around in the wake of the Framing Britney Spears documentary on Hulu, which is making a lot of people reexamine the way young women have been treated in the media.
On Saturday, journalist Trey Taylor shared a two minute clip from a 2013 interview Lohan did on Late Night With David Letterman where the titular host pressed Lohan about a number of issues including her time in rehab, making jokes at her expense that were called “horrifying.”
This Lindsay Lohan interview on David Letterman in 2013 is horrifying to watch now. pic.twitter.com/lZxKVvbVB0
— 𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐲 𝐭𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐨𝐫 (@treytylor) February 13, 2021
You can watch the full interview above, but many people on social media noted how uncomfortable Lohan looked and criticized Letterman’s flippant attitude toward rehab, addiction and sobriety. Letterman consistently went back to Lohan’s time in rehab, and that she was scheduled to head back to rehab shortly after her appearance on the show.
“What are they rehab-ing? What is on their list? What are they going to work on when you walk through the door?” Letterman asked at one point, drawing some laughs from the audience.
Neither Lohan or Letterman had commented on the clip resurfacing by Saturday night, and the video that was on Twitter was just a portion of the total interview, which you can watch in full above. But it’s a reminder of how many young female celebrities were treated in pop culture less than a decade ago, and how poorly much of that footage looks in hindsight.
