Oprah Winfrey deletes controversial Cindy Crawford interview after supermodel calls her out

Cindy Crawford called the TV host out for "treating her like chattel" during an interview. Photo / Getty Images

Oprah Winfrey has removed a 1986 video clip from YouTube which shows her asking a then-20-year-old Cindy Crawford to show off her body on national television. This comes after the supermodel slammed the TV host for the interaction in a recent documentary, reports the Daily Mail.

The 57-year-old catwalk star opened up about her early days in the modelling industry for Apple TV+ series The Super Models, looking back on her experience as a 20-year-old model appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986 alongside her Elite Modelling Agency representative John Casablancas.

Oprah Winfrey and Cindy Crawford at 'An Evening Under The Colorado Sky', a benefit held on Tuesday, January 23, 2001. Photo / Getty Images

In a clip from the show, Winfrey is seen asking Casablancas: “‘Did she always have this body?’, before telling the young model, ‘Stand up just a moment - now this is what I call a body’.”

Speaking in The Super Models, Crawford said of the experience: “I was like the chattel or a child, be seen and not heard. When you look at it through today’s eyes, Oprah’s like: ‘Stand up and show me your body. Show us why you’re worthy of being here.’

“In the moment I didn’t recognise it, and watching it back I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, that was so not okay, really.’ Especially from Oprah!”

During the show, Winfrey addressed questions to Casablancas, who was seen speaking on his client’s behalf.

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At one point, Winfrey asked him if Crawford had been through a “training period”, and the modelling agency boss replied: “With Cindy, it was much more [that] psychologically, she was not sure she really wanted to model … little by little, her ambition is growing. She’s getting a sense, and I’m saying it now on this programme, if she wants to, she can be number one in the business.”

In The Super Models documentary, which features the likes of Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington, Crawford revealed she dropped out of college to chase her dream of becoming a model - but it was hard work, and she claims to have “passed out” from hunger during long days shooting for catalogues.

She said: “I was 20 years old, I had dropped out of college to model in Chicago and it was great. I was making US$1,000 ($1,690) a day. The main business there was catalogue ... I passed out there more than once. Especially right before lunch, you pass out and you would faint. And then they would prop you back up and you would do it all over again.”

Soon after the Daily Mail published Crawford’s scathing comments, the video was discreetly made private on the Oprah Winfrey Network YouTube page, despite being available for the last three years.

The Super Models is currently available to stream on Apple TV+.