BBC Documentaries

Frost on Nixon (2011x242)

Air date: Nov 13, 2011

Joan Bakewell talks to Sir David Frost about his landmark interviews with former United States president Richard Nixon. The Nixon Interviews, first broadcast in 1977, gained record audiences and the high drama which surrounded them later became the subject of both a West End play and an Oscar-nominated film, Frost/Nixon. Sir David tells Joan Bakewell about the fight to secure the interview and the struggle to raise the money to make it. He also recalls the negotiations with Hollywood super-agent Swifty Lazar, whom Nixon had retained to represent him, the intense discussions with Nixon's own team of advisers, and trying to come to terms with the hugely complicated personality of Richard Nixon himself. At times the contest between the two men verged on gladiatorial, at others Frost almost seemed to be Nixon's confessor. It ended with Nixon's momentous apology to the American people.