When Barbara Walters traveled to Havana to interview Fidel Castro in 1977, she expected to come face-to-face with the Cuban leader's suspicion of the U.S., his vast state-security apparatus, and his prodigious, self-made mythology. She did not expect grilled cheese.
"After we finished the interview at one o'clock in the morning, Castro took us into his kitchen and made us grilled cheese sandwiches," Walters says with a laugh. "That's an experience you don't have anymore." Not many other newswomen had the experience back then either. The trip was a series of surprises almost from the moment Walters and her crew landed in Havana. "Castro picked me up in front of my hotel in his Jeep," she recalls. "The tourists just couldn't believe this, that he was sitting in an open Jeep!" He took her to the Bay of Pigs, where they boarded a patrol boat and crossed the bay (allegedly the first Americans to do so since the 1961 U.S.-backed invasion), then chauffeured Walters to the Sierra Maestra, the mountainous region where Castro lived for two years with his band of guerrilla fighters before ousting Fulgencio Batista and taking power.
"I remember sitting in the front of the Jeep and holding candy—because he wanted to stop and give candy to children along the way—and I was also holding his gun," Walters says, explaining that she picked up the revolver off the floor of the Jeep every time they forded a stream. That night they all dined outdoors on roast pig and Algerian wine at Castro's mountain retreat.
All along, the leader was in a lighthearted mood. "He was very charismatic—very charming and funny," says Walters, who had already conducted her now famous interview with President Richard Nixon for this magazine, in 1971. "We joked with him. He looked at our cameras and said he should be a producer, and we told him, 'You're not good enough to be a producer.' He said, 'What should I be?,' and I said, 'You can be our driver.' And we paid him $5."
The interview came later, at Castro's headquarters in Havana. Over the five-hour exchange, which would be edited into a one-hour ABC News special, the two parried, with Walters challenging Castro on his worldviews, at one point telling him he was "almost naive" in his perception of the U.S.'s relationship with China. But Castro was unequivocal on his plans for the future: "He said he was going to stay in power as long as people wanted him, which meant until he died." Almost as noteworthy were the topics he refused to address. "He would never talk about his private life. So to this day, [even though] I heard he was married, I don't know."
One thing that seemed clear to everyone was the chemistry between Walters and Castro, but she didn't see it that way. "People did tease me after that, asking if this was a romance," she says. "But it wasn't at all—not for a moment was there flirtation." When Castro dropped Walters off at the airport in Havana, "I reached up to kiss him on both cheeks, and he all but pushed me away. It was a friendly European goodbye, but I was in Cuba, not France."
Photographs from the trip depict a newswoman whose gravitas didn't yet define her. In place of the Oscar de la Renta suits and halo of blown-out hair that are her trademarks today, Walters looked ready for a safari in trench coats, head scarves, and open-collared shirts. But the confidence in her gaze was there; so was her clear determination to get the story, transmitted by the set of her shoulders and mouth. Castro must have thought as much, judging from the inscription on a copy of Cuba's Constitution that he gave her: "For Barbara as a remembrance of the most difficult interview that I have had in all the days of my life. Fidel Castro, May 20, 1977, 1:29 A.M."
Walters, who as an ABC Evening News co-anchor and 20/20 cohost and chief correspondent would go on to interview Margaret Thatcher, Michael Jackson, and President Barack Obama, among other luminaries, had the chance to speak to Castro again, 25 years later. "I remember saying to him that he had gotten grayer and I had gotten blonder," she says. She has been requesting access for a follow-up ever since, seeking one more chance to interview the leader. "Cuba is a very different country because of Fidel Castro, and I don't know what he is proudest of or what he wishes he could have accomplished," she explains. "I probably would ask him if he thought the Cuban revolution was a success, and if his people were better off. What was his legacy, what were his mistakes, what did he regret most?"
Nearly 40 years after that trip to Havana, Walters, now 84, is facing retirement, with the full force of her titanic reputation intact. She says she's looking forward to writing and resting: "I would like to sleep until 9 A.M. or wake up when I feel like it." Not that she's slowing down entirely—there is always another interview with the Obamas to prepare for, and that elusive sit-down with the new pope.?… "Just when you think you have done everything, there is another person in the news who still makes it interesting," she says. "If I look back, it hasn't all been one happy crescendo. There have been a lot of difficult times too. But I've traveled all over the world. You know, I never thought I would be in front of a camera. I've had an absolutely blessed career that is still going on. It even amazes me. I think, 'No kidding, did I do that? How nice.'"
Fidel Castro shows Barbara Walters a map of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, 1977
