The former anchor spoke to Andrew Goldman, host of “The Originals” podcast for Los Angeles magazine, and discussed a wide range of topics including guest-starring on HBO’s “The Undoing,” her time at CBS Evening News and ABC News.
While talking about her scene in “The Undoing,” opposite Hugh Grant, in which she portrays a journalist interviewing Grant’s character about being investigated for murder, she said she gave Grant some tips.
“When Hugh Grant sat down, he was looking all rumpled,” she said. “He’s one of those British rumpled fellows. And his tie was askew, and I am very OCD. So, I said, ‘Hugh, straighten up your tie.’ And he goes and fixes it. And then one collar was outside of his suit… And I went, ‘Hugh, fix that.’ And then he was looking like Rodney Dangerfield. He should sit on the back of like in ‘Broadcast News’ sit on the back of your jacket, so that it’s nice and tidy.”
She also said that she believes she’s heard but not seen much in her scene because she re-wrote sections of the dialogue.
In 1993, Chung became the co-anchor of the “CBS Evening News”
with Dan Rather. She only had the job two years and says of working with Rather: “If I turned my back, I felt like I might be in a scene of ‘Psycho’ in the shower,” suggesting she always had to watch her back around her co-anchor, noting she was forced into doing tabloid-style interviews that others did not want to do.
She went on to work at the ABC News magazine show, “20/20.”
During the podcast interview, she said the atmosphere at the network, where she worked with fellow journalists Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer, was competitive and compared it to the bitter 1990s rivalry between figure skaters Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding.
“[W]hen I got to ABC, both Diane and Barbara were in the same sort of arena of trying to get these big interviews. So, when I tried to go after them, I was told I could not. That Barbara and Diane were the only ones who could compete for the interview and I had to stand down. And I said, ‘Really?'”
Chung briefly worked at CNN, hosting a show in 2002 called, “Connie Chung Tonight.”
CNN has reached out to representatives for Chung, Walters, Sawyer and Rather for comment.
