Crawford on '86 Oprah Interview: 'I Was Like the Chattel'

Supermodel looks back on uncomfortable talk-show appearance, offers thoughts on ex Richard Gere
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 21, 2023 11:00 AM CDT

The Apple TV+ docuseries The Super Models debuted Wednesday, detailing the careers of Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, and, perhaps the most famous of them all, Cindy Crawford. The first episode brings Crawford to the screen, where she makes not only rare comments about her first marriage to actor Richard Gere, but also talks about a 1986 interview with Oprah Winfrey that, upon reflection, now leaves a bad taste in her mouth. "Did she always have this body?" Oprah asks Crawford's modeling agent, John Casablancas, in a clip of Crawford's appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. "This is unbelievable."

Oprah then commands Crawford to "stand up just a moment," declaring, "Now this is what I call a body," as Crawford rises from her chair and stands there, "smiling awkwardly," per Insider. In her Super Models clip, Crawford now says it was an uncomfortable moment. "I was like the chattel or a child, be seen and not heard," she says. "In the moment I didn't recognize it. Only when I look back at it am I like, 'Oh, my gosh, that was so not OK, really. Especially from Oprah."

Crawford also made some rare comments during the episode about her long-ago relationship with Gere, who was 17 years older than the 25-year-old Crawford when they eloped in 1991, three years after they'd first met. "In the beginning of a relationship, when you're a young woman, you're like, 'You like baseball? I like baseball. You're really into Tibetan Buddhism? I might be into that. I'll try that," she says in Super Models (Gere has been a longtime Buddhist, per ET Online).

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She continues, "At 22 ... I was kind of still figuring out who I was and what I wanted to be ... [Gere] was already 37, so in some ways he knew that I was still growing and changing. I didn't want to hear it from him because at 22, you think you know everything and you think you're already formed and then you realize 10 years later ... 'Oh, my gosh, they were totally right.'" The pair divorced in 1995, and Crawford went on to marry Rande Gerber, with whom she shares a son and daughter. Gere married two other times: first to model and actor Carey Lowell, with whom he shares a son, then to current wife Alejandra Silva, a publicist with whom he shares two sons. (More Cindy Crawford stories.)

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