The female rival who Barbara Walters secretly hated because she was jealous of her talent and beauty
Barbara Walters secretly hated a female rival during their time together at ABC, an ex-TV producer has revealed.
A new documentary about Walters claims she felt 'betrayed' by the arrival of Diane Sawyer at the network in the early 1990s.
An anonymous staffer said Walters viewed the younger Sawyer as a 'threat' and 'secretly resented' her for years.
The hatred stemmed from Sawyer's journalism and good-looks, sources said, with a former producer explaining, 'Barbara saw herself as someone who had helped elevate ABC News to a pinnacle.
'And that had her feeling betrayed by Diane's arrival in the '90s.'
Another producer dished: 'Barbara watched Diane wearily because she was really in the same altitude as Barbara. Other correspondents were not a threat.'
The anonymous staffer further revealed how 'Barbara secretly resented Diane for being younger,' two-and-a-half years after the 20/20 host's passing at age 93.
'Barbara did not know why Diane was hired to start a new news magazine within our home of ABC to compete with 20/20,' the first source further noted, referring to Sawyer, 79, and Sam Donaldson's since-cancelled but long-successful Primetime.
'There was a lot of talk about how that being a different 20/20, a better 20/20, a more alive 20/20 and more energetic 20/20,' the source said.
'[They were] pitted against each other - which was either great management or diabolical.'
The source recalled Sawyer being "unhappy" about the situation.
The film, Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything, aired at Tribeca Film Festival on Thursday saw the claims aired for the first time.
It also featured a voiceover from the late Walters denying ever feuding with Sawyer.
'I don't think Diane Sawyer and I had a feud,' Walters said. 'I think people know that we were after the same [interview] gets.'
Another anonymous ABC staffer did insist there was tension, describing two distinct camps.
'They were on different floors. It was like North Korea and South Korea,' he said. '[N]o members of our staffs talked to each other about what they were working on. It was just a competitive space to live in.'
The competition, in one case, stemmed from the two both attempting to interview Katharine Hepburn in the late 80s - a bout a then-green Sawyer won.
But Walters - as Sawyers has previously hinted - attempted to block it, staffers said.
'If I showed up on Mars, they would have a note there with the Barbara Walters stationary that is just requesting an interview with anybody who might happen to show,' Sawyer jokes in a section of the film.
A female friend of Walters added: 'She was certainly dogged by Diane's very existence. She often said, "Diane was the perfect woman."
'She used the word[s] "a blonde goddess,"' the source continued.
'This was an ideal woman and Barbara couldn't compete with that.'
While the longtime ABC News legend could always 'work harder,' she knew 'she couldn't compete with that," the person recalled.
'The blonde goddess, she would say.'
Another person who worked with Walters said Sawyer's rise saw Walters regress. Walters spent 38 years at ABC, but fought to be taken seriously in the decades before during her own meteoric rise after starting her career at NBC in the 60s.
'She couldn't tolerate having Diane Sawyer rise in what she saw as a direct challenge to what she had accomplished,' the source said. 'What a sadness.
'I think it tore into all of those parts of herself where she felt as a child and she was an outsider,' they added. 'In some bizarre way, Diane made her feel all of those insecurities all over again.'
Walters, meanwhile, recently made headlines - posthumously - after a former colleague criticized her at-times abrupt interview style.
'Some of her interviews haven't aged well,' former ABC correspondent Cynthia McFadden told People Magazine Wednesday, likely recalling notorious moments like the one in 1976 Walters asked Barbra Streisand why she hadn't gotten a nose job.
In 2011, the aging anchor told the Kardashians: 'You don't act, you don't sing, you don't dance, you don't have any -forgive me - talent.'
The new film is set to stream on Hulu on June 23. Walters retired from ABC in 2014. Sawyer went of the air full-time the same year. Presently, she works for ABC News producing documentaries and interview specials.
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