Gotta be “Dr.” Phil McGraw’s horribly exploitative interview with Shelley Duvall.
Duvall was once the muse of director Robert Altman, who discovered her at a party in Houston, Texas, and subsequently cast her in several of his films in the 1970s (he also got what I consider her career-best performance out of her, in 3 Women), but she may be best remembered as the beleaguered Wendy Torrance in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.
Shelley in The Shining.
Duvall officially retired from acting in 2002 when she was 53, and disappeared from the public eye; no one heard from her for years — until “Dr.” Phil aired an interview with an unrecognizable, and very clearly mentally ill, Duvall in 2016. (I’m not going to post pictures of her from the interview; I won’t exploit her further to try to garner upvotes on Quora. The article is linked below if anyone is that curious, and I imagine the video could be hunted down.)
Duvall told McGraw, among other things, that Robin Williams, her leading man in Altman’s film Popeye — and who died in 2014 — was still alive, and just “shapeshifting”; that she was being “threatened” by the Sheriff of Nottingham (from the Robin Hood legend); and that aliens had implanted something in her leg. She also told him she was sick and needed help, but reportedly refused an offer of treatment.
Stanley Kubrick’s daughter Vivian called McGraw out on Twitter for taking advantage of Duvall for the sake of ratings; she tweeted the following to him:
Other celebrities echoed Kubrick’s disgust, including Patton Oswalt, Ron Perlman, and Mia and Ronan Farrow. Now, I have never watched “Dr.” Phil’s show, but his decision to air the interview made national and international headlines, and many were in agreement with Kubrick that it was no more than exploitation of a sick person for personal gain.
I never liked Phil McGraw, and I’ve liked him even less since this incident; I wouldn’t watch his trashy show if you paid me. I hope Shelley is doing okay today.
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