Tragic Details About Diane Sawyer's Life

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Diane Sawyer has had a long career in politics and journalism, building a solid reputation for hard-hitting interviews with some of the world's biggest public figures. She's stepped back from the spotlight a bit in recent years, leading some fans to wonder what happened to her. Although she's retired, Sawyer was a stalwart journalist and dedicated TV newswoman.

Sawyer has worked hard to shine a light on many hidden facets of American culture and society, including spending several days in a jail cell to examine female incarceration in the American prison system. However, her venerated career has also been punctuated by controversy, such as her resurfaced 2003 interview with Britney Spears that didn't age well and angered fans. Throughout it all, she's remained a consummate professional.

Behind the scenes, however, Sawyer has had some truly trying times. She's suffered painful losses and a particularly adversarial relationship with an A-list colleague. Throughout her storied career, Sawyer has managed to deal with the tragedies and turn them into triumphs.

Diane Sawyer lost two important people in her life over the span of several weeks, leaving her in mourning. The veteran journalist's mother, Jean Sawyer Hayes, died on October 22, 2014, after a long illness. Less than a month later, on November 19, Sawyer's husband, Oscar-winning director Mike Nichols, died of a heart attack in his Manhattan apartment at age 83. The back-to-back losses were difficult for Sawyer, who was spotted for the first time a few days after Nichols' death, when she attended a church service with their son, Max Nichols, and was clearly cloaked in grief.

"Losing Mike when she was still grieving over her mother is just an incredible emotional toll," an unnamed source told Closer Weekly, before adding that the longtime TV journalist was "holding up as well as you could hope for" given the circumstances. However, she didn't let the loss keep her from pursuing her passion in life, namely chasing big news stories and getting headline-grabbing interviews. Sawyer remained as a correspondent for "ABC News" and continued to dedicate herself to her career, even in the face of her painful loss.

When Diane Sawyer was coming up the ranks, Barbara Walters apparently saw her as the ultimate competition, making what could have been a powerhouse duo something much less friendly. According to the 2024 biography "The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters," the longtime newswoman did everything she could to sabotage Sawyer, often attempting to steal her interviews. Author Susan Page claimed that Walters saw Sawyer as her "nemesis" because she was younger and more conventionally attractive.

"If someone had built to order the woman most likely to set off Barbara Walters, she would have looked a lot like Diane Sawyer," Page wrote (via The Daily Mail). The book also recounts an instance in which Sawyer and Walters pretended to be friendly while on an elevator with ABC producer Ira Rosen. However, after Walters stepped off the elevator, Sawyer supposedly turned venomous and told Rosen, "I hate that woman. Don't believe a word she says. She knifes me any chance she can get." 

In July 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr. died in a tragic plane crash, alongside his wife Carolyn Bessette and his sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette. It was yet another shocking tragedy in the Kennedy family's history, and it led to a media firestorm of coverage. There was constant reporting on the crash and the aftermath, with dozens of pundits and reporters weighing in with their two cents. However, it was Diane Sawyer who was conspicuously absent from her place behind the desk at ABC News. For some reason, many viewers seemed to take issue with Sawyer stepping back from the circus and felt it was somehow disrespectful.

"I do want to make it clear that I think a lot of people in this country felt the weight of the tragedy," Sawyer said at the time (via Deseret News), addressing her decision not to cover the event when it happened. Instead, Sawyer explained to viewers that she "did have other personal considerations. And they are personal." She chose not to explain herself and stood firm that she had every right to do so.

Eventually, the truth of the situation emerged. Apart from a friendship with the Kennedy family, Sawyer was also close friends with a former TV news producer, Anthony Radziwill, who was JFK Jr.'s cousin and also battling cancer at the time of the crash. The New York Post reported that Sawyer and her husband, Mike Nichols, flew out to visit Radziwill, where he was staying at Martha's Vineyard, and he asked Sawyer, as a friend of the family, not to cover the news. Sawyer kept her word and endured public outcry for her consideration.