What’s sex got to do with it?
Tina Turner once scolded “60 Minutes” journalist Mike Wallace after he repeatedly made sleazy remarks about her sex appeal, a former CBS employee alleges.
Leslie Molson, who worked at CBS between 1996 and 2004, took to Twitter Thursday to claim she saw unreleased footage of an interview Wallace conducted with Turner, in which she abruptly halted production due to his inappropriate behavior.
“One assignment I had at ’60 Minutes’ was to watch old raw (unedited) interview footage, for some reason I can’t recall,” Molson began her lengthy Twitter thread, which has been viewed more than 650,000 times.
“So I watched the raw footage of a 1996 Mike Wallace interview with Tina Turner.”
The ex-network employee continued: “Wallace interviewed her at her estate in Nice, and it starts in the usual way with B-roll of them walking the grounds. Then they’re sitting across from each other in her sitting room, and right out of the gate — immediately — he’s leering, telling her how *sexy* she is.”
“As they talk, Wallace has a confident smirk on his face and goes on about her performances, how *sexual* they are, why are they so sexual, how sexual is she, and so on … Turner looks at the camera, mimes ‘cut’; and the footage ends abruptly,” Molson claimed.
The Post has reached out to Molson for further comment. Reps for CBS did not immediately respond to The Post’s requests for a reaction to her now-viral thread.
Meanwhile, in the final cut of the interview that went to air, Turner and Wallace appear to get on well. CBS even reshared the sit-down following Turner’s death on Wednesday. The superstar clearly didn’t hold a grudge with the network despite any potential friction with Wallace, appearing on CBS for multiple interviews in the ensuing years, including a candid chat with Gayle King in 2018.
In the Twitter thread, Molson claimed cameras subsequently resumed filming after Turner seemingly chided Wallace for the unwanted questions and remarks.
“When filming resumes, Mike is PROFUSELY apologizing to Tina with a sheepish, serious look on his face, and promising to stick to questions about her career,” the former CBS worker wrote.
“It’s obvious that she gave him what for when the camera stopped rolling and it was glorious! Few people had done that and it was glorious! Few people had done that.”
“It was great to see Tina Turner call him out like that, but to think that she had to deal with that shit from an overpaid, predatory former game show host, despite her being one of the most brilliant talents of the 20th century, is appalling,” Molson further declared.
She concluded: “the interview as it aired is bad enough, actually—Mike Wallace belittled Tina Turner’s talent and also thought nothing of treating her with zero respect, until she threatened to kick him out of her house. Wallace was an asshole of the highest order.”
Wallace — who died in 2012 — worked at “60 Minutes” from 1969 to 2006, and is considered one of America’s most legendary news reporters.
However, the esteemed journalist admitted during a 1991 interview to “putting his hand on the backs of his female CBS News co-workers and unsnapping the clasps on their bras” during the 1970s and 80s.
Meanwhile, network producer Ira Rosen alleged in a 2021 book that Wallace “regularly peppered colleagues with questions about their sex lives; lashed out at them for no good reason; grabbed the bottoms and breasts of women who worked in the office; pulled them onto his lap; and snapped bra straps.”
Wallace has previously come under criticism for a 1991 interview he conducted with another legendary female performer.
In a sit-down with Barbra Streisand, the journalist pushed the icon to tears while probing her about painful memories from her childhood.
Turner passed away Wednesday at the age of 83.
Turner suffered battled cancer, and suffered a stroke and kidney troubles, but her reps revealed that she died from natural causes.
Fans have been mourning the “queen of rock ‘n’ roll” outside the palatial home she shared with her husband, Irwin Bach, in Kusnach, Switzerland.
