Barbara Walters Caught Chickenpox from Frank Langella
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ABC/Donna Svennevik(NEW YORK) — Barbara Walters finally admitted who she contracted chickenpox from on Tuesday, after trying to be coy about the specifics during her return to The View on Monday.
“I said yesterday that it was a famous actor, who had the shingles …I gave him a hug and I got the chickenpox, but I didn’t say who he was,” Walters said Tuesday on The View. “So today…it is Frank Langella.”
Langella is a Tony Award-winning actor, best known recently for his portrayal of as Richard Nixon in the Broadway play and later the film, Frost/Nixon.
On Monday, Walters attempted to protect the 75-year-old actor’s privacy by giving only the necessary details to concerned viewers.
“…I was visiting a friend in Miami and she had as another guest a well-known actor who shall be nameless. And I gave him a New Year’s hug and a kiss on the cheek. The next day he left. What he didn’t know then and I didn’t know at all was that he was about to develop a bad case of shingles,” she said.
As Walters explained to the audience, she contracted chickenpox from the shingles virus because she never had the highly contagious disease as a child.
The 83-year-old journalist returned to The View on Monday after six weeks of recuperation after fainting and falling on a stair at the British ambassador’s residence over Inauguration weekend. After being taken to the hospital to be examined by doctors, Walters discovered she had contracted chickenpox, which was what had caused her to faint.
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