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You probably know Ali Wentworth as a comedian and bestselling author of books like Ali’s Well That Ends Well and Ali in Wonderland. Or perhaps you remember her from her days as a correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show. Now, proving yet again that she’s a woman of many talents, Wentworth has a new passion project you don’t want to miss.
Late last year, Ali and her husband, George Stephanopoulous (co-anchor of Good Morning America), announced they had started a production company together called BedBy8 and would be focused on television projects, limited series, and documentaries. Their very first project? Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, a two-part documentary now on Hulu, that uncovers everything Shields has endured—including being sexualized at a young age, postpartum depression, and sexual assault. And while it is very much about the actor’s life, it is also about looking at a society that puts young women in these situations—a message that Wentworth is passionate about sharing.
Here, Wentworth talks more about this new project, how she navigated raising two daughters in the age of social media, and more.
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What inspired you to start your production company?
George and I have been married for 21 years, and we’re both storytellers in completely different ways. I think it was a combination of just timing, being and becoming empty nesters. We had been talking about it for a while and we sort of thought, We love storytelling. Let’s do it together. The Brooke doc was our first thing. She’s a really good friend of mine, and I’ve been talking to her about doing a doc for years, but I didn’t think of producing it because I didn’t have a production company and I was doing eight million other things. Finally, I called her up and said, “Look, we should do this documentary.” It was off to the races from there.
What’s it like to work with your husband?
We get into it, we care about it, we think about it. At first, George and I stayed in our lanes. I was developing more comedic stuff. He’d been developing more dramatic stuff. But they’ve completely enmeshed now. George is just as involved in the comedy stuff. I’m just as involved in some of his unscripted stuff that deals with politics and stuff. It’s been great—it’s better than, you know, adopting a thousand dogs—which was the secondary idea and will still absolutely happen.
Pretty Baby follows Brooke Shields’s life and dives into some pretty big themes. How would you describe what it tackles?
I would say the documentary is about two things. It is about a woman finding agency—really finding her voice. It’s also a film about the sexualization of young girls in our culture. We see these things all within the framework of Brooke’s life. Her life is so full, but it also is the backbone of so many different things where she had no voice and no power—you see this through her childhood, through the postpartum stuff she went through, through her sexual assault, and through her marriage with Andre Agassi. These are all examples of a woman who had no say and had no voice.
As you mention, Pretty Baby dives into how young girls are sexualized. Did this spark conversation with your own daughters?
It was actually the reverse. I’ve had a huge issue with the sexualization of girls in our culture. I had been parenting my daughters about social media from day one. So when we started working on the Brooke doc, that was the thing I was most passionate about. You know, the sexualization of girls in our capitalistic society is not over. Now with social media, girls are objectifying themselves. There needs to be a parenting guide on social media—it’s a whole section of parenting that none of us were prepared for. I think we need to educate girls on owning their sexuality, and their beauty, but also not making themselves products—not selling themselves. All to say, I was attuned to it before the doc, and it made me even more passionate about the messaging.
What is one question every woman should ask herself?
Who am I really? This is something I talked to my daughters about. We project so much onto ourselves, and at some point we need to ask ourselves that question. Who am I? What do I really think? What are my beliefs? I used to joke with George because on my birthday every year, I would go away for the weekend by myself. To me, that was a gift. And George used to think it was so weird. He’d say, “Why don’t you want to go away with a friend?” I’d say, “Because I never have time to just sit and think about who I am. I don’t even know if I’m against the death penalty! I need to sit down and really think about it—without reading some article that’s going to persuade me.” So I think it’s important that we all take the time to really think about who we are and what we believe.
Bethany Heitman has spent 15 years producing content for women; she is the former editor-in-chief of PeopleStyle and has held senior leadership positions at Cosmopolitan and Seventeen. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York
