NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas - The Drink with Kate Snow: Brooke Shields

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

Brooke Shields got her start at a young age as a model and actor, and she’s not going anywhere. She talks with NBC News’ Kate Snow about young fame, re-inventing her career & her new hair care line, Commence.

Hey, this is Kate Snow. So Brooke Shields and I met up on a hot summer day on Rockefeller Plaza. We talked over iced green tea for my series, The Drink. It's always about how people got to the top. And you might think you know Brooke's story, child model and actor, mom was her manager. But I had no idea how hard she worked to stay relevant all those years. And we talked about what happens when you reach 50 and people are telling you, oh, you had a good run. She is just getting started with a brand new hair care line. You can find all my conversations with top artists, entrepreneurs, and visionaries at NBC news.com slash the drink. The irony I've been comparing myself to other people my entire life. I've been like living up to a standard. I finally don't give a and now I'm being told it's the beginning of the end. You're past your prime or whatever. You're like, you know, put you out. You had a good run. So Brooke Shields, what is your drink here? It's iced green tea.

Very refreshing. Refreshing on a hot summer day. Nice at this time of day. Yeah. Thank you so much. A little later it would have been tequila, but... I would have done tequila, too. We've done everything on the drink.

Cheers to green tea. Mmm. Mmm. green tea. We are at Naro, which is a new spot on the rink at Rapacolor Plaza. I used to come ice skating here with my dad. You did? Yeah, when I was a little girl. When you were a kid. I think everybody my age knows your whole life. We think we know your whole life story. I'm sorry. You've been famous most of your life. Yeah, there's a lot of me out there. Yeah. I usually ask people how they got here. So for you, it goes so far back, right? It's a long story. You start modeling when you're what,

11 months old? And I rocked a diaper. You telling you. You did, actually. You modeled for companies for years as a kid. Yeah. With your mom managing you. In the city. In the city. Hustling. Oh, it's still a hustle.

You were the primary breadwinner. Is that right? For your mom and you? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was, my mom was a single mom. And I fell into this opportunity and it paid the bills and I had a blast doing it. You know, when you're a kid model, you get to go to like Knott's Berry Farm and in a van with other kids and they photograph you for McCall's Patterns and you know, you're with your

best friends and they do it on the weekend and you you're having fun. And you're having fun. And then I would go to regular school. So it was sort of this, it was just always a job, but it never was who I was. I know you wrote a whole book about your mom. Yeah, I did. So it's probably a pretty complicated relationship, I would imagine. You know, I mean, what mother-daughter relationship isn't fraught and complicated? Right, but throw in managing your career. Well, and part of that made it easier because it was the two of us against the world. Yeah. And as a young child, having your mom be there and buffer you from so much of what I see now allowed me to be a little kid. Your mom made some choices that now people question, right?

Like Pretty Baby when you were 11 years old, playing a child prostitute. Mama, aren't you handsome? You know what? I'd make that movie again. You would? That one in particular, absolutely. Why? It's the most beautiful movie i've ever been in you make the point in the documentary that it could never happen now right i mean an 11 year old

most of my movies you could not happen or my anything you were how old i was 15 and naked in lots of the scenes i mean yeah i yeah. I had a body double. Okay. Um, and then had my hair taped to myself. So it was like, yeah, it was this weird, but we were living on this Island and we were living in that world. Like it was, it's really interesting.

Like you could never make movies the way we made them. Then we went off and set up an entire ecosystem. Yeah. And you live there. And we lived there for over five months on a deserted island yeah that stuff doesn't happen anymore i got a call sheet every night i knew what to do every day those types of boundaries especially if you're living with or the person you love your your mother is an alcoholic. Boundaries are the things that you rely on. Yeah. You know, it's how you get through all those years and don't have that child actor. And I always had people, I always had people,

you know, yeah, they had an invested interest in me, but they also care. It's the biggest sort of constantly moving contradiction that somehow I truly believe I came out unscathed. You go off to Princeton. I did go to Princeton. You didn't have to do that, probably. You were in the midst of a, you were on fire at that point, right? You did the Calvin Klein commercials, like everybody knew you, and then you go to Princeton. I think, you know, first of all,

it was the time to go. I don't think I knew it, but I was about to be in decline. I wasn't the 15 year old, you know, um, anymore sensation. Yeah. Right. You know, going to a university and studying something that had nothing to do with my profession and later finding how it informed my creativity and what I do. Yeah. I wouldn't be able to write books. It made you a critical think um, broader view. And then in your twenties, you kind of, you get back into acting. Try to try to, you have a lot of famous friends for a while. You're hanging out with Michael Jackson. You marry Andre Augustine, the tennis pro like, and Miss Piggy and Miss Piggy. I forgot about that. She would not be happy with that.'m just telling you okay you know it was a lot of ambling around you have to keep proving yourself yeah and i gained weight in college and who did

bad hair and all of you have never had bad hair i'm sorry well there's no way feathering moment which wasn't that was high school oh that was a little brutal. I had the perm, too. I had the total perm. I had the bangs. It was not a good idea. But all you saw was like this. But it was a lot of pick me, pick me. Try to pick me. Please, please, please pick me. That had to be hard inside. Oh, it just, it was all consuming.

Because I didn't know who I was without it. You know, what do you mean I'm not doing a movie every year? What do you mean I'm not considered an ingenue? I'm 18. I'm 21. And you're constantly going, no, no, no. I'm good now. And now I have an education, so I'm smart.

Like, don't you want that? And they don't. And I found Broadway. And then, thank God, comedy and TV. Is that when like suddenly Susan and all that starts happening? Oh, Friends, right. And that changed the whole trajectory of my career. I want to talk about what you're doing now because you really, it seems like you're sort

of reinventing yourself again. You've got this new company. You started it as a community of women over 40, right? I was in my mid fifties and feeling amazing. You know, it was, there was balance. It was, and I couldn't understand why I was being overlooked in the marketplace. I started this online community because I, I said to one of my best friends, I was like, this is crazy. The irony. I've been comparing myself to other people my entire life. I've been like living up to a standard.

I finally don't give a who, and, and, and now I'm being told'm being told it's the beginning of the end. You're past your prime or whatever. You had a good run. And I was like, no, no, no. I'm just starting to run a different course here. I love that. And you found a lot of people. And they very quickly kept saying, what are you selling?

And I said, I'm not here to monetize you. I'm here to get to know you and find out what you want and what you need. And inevitably, it went to hair. Hair. Hair. People were like, what do you do for your hair? Well, there are things that happen over 40 where you have to address. So we developed three unbelievable products, really addressing problems and changes and challenges that women over 40 were starting.

Frizziness, texture, dullness. And it all started at the root. So the brand is called what? The brand is called Commence. We launched and you were telling people to go to shopcommence.com and they're buying it. Cheers to that, right?

Thank you. Can we do a lightning round real fast? weirdest thing about you my feet they are not good best advice you ever got don't take no for an answer worst advice you ever got just do what they say favorite outfit you ever wore um emmys badgley m Mishka, Fuchsia, dress. Best part of being over 50? Believing that there's still more, that it really is a beginning, you know, and I get to be, I get to see my kids become young adults and, and, and they want to be around me. They like you.

It's the best part of it. It's so, unbelievably what a gift it is. Brooke Shields. thank you so much. This is great.