Framing Britney Spears inspired a retrospective of how the media has treated young stars in the past decade, including Lindsay Lohan. On Saturday, a 2013 interview she gave at The last show with David Letterman resurfaced as part of this look back. At the time, Lohan was promoting Scary Movie 5, but all that Letterman asked Lohan repeatedly was his next trip to rehab.
“Shouldn’t you be in rehab now?” Letterman asked Lohan right away. She said her next stay in rehab would start in May of that year. Letterman then asked a series of quick, short questions about his stay in rehab. “How many times have you been to rehab?” He asked her. “Several,” she said as the audience started to laugh. “How will it be different this time? What are they rehabilitating? What’s on their list? What will they work on when you walk through the door?” Letterman fired in quick succession as Lohan sighed. “We didn’t discuss that in the pre-interview,” said Lohan while shaking his head.
This interview with Lindsay Lohan about David Letterman in 2013 is horrible to watch now. pic.twitter.com/lZxKVvbVB0
– 𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐲 𝐭𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐨𝐫 (@treytylor) February 13, 2021
“To be honest, I’m happier when I’m working and healthier,” said Lohan. “I think it’s an opportunity for me, you know, to focus on what I love in life. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think it’s a blessing.”
Letterman continued to press her on the subject, then asked if she had “addiction problems”. Lohan stopped for a moment before telling Letterman that he looked like Dr. Phil McGraw. The host continued to press, even asking if she drank “too much”. THE Parental Trap star tried to get Letterman to change the subject, telling him that they had talked about it in the past, which made Letterman joke that he was the one who was having a “blackout”.
In the next segment, Letterman tried to ask Lohan what Lohan does in rehab. She told him that she was there to talk about a movie and asked him to “stay positive”. But then Letterman said he had a list of the things she “endured” over the years, and she took it from him. Upon reading them, she pretended to laugh and said, “I thought you were going to be nice.” Letterman took the list, but Lohan pulled it out.
Lohan later read some of the jokes out loud before telling Letterman not to mock his struggles. “You can’t joke about that,” she said. “This is so mean.” Letterman asked if he could tell one of the jokes on the list and she refused. “No, we are not going to do that. This is my show now,” she said, shaking her head. In the end, Lohan started to cry. “Awww, she’s tearing up a little bit,” said Letterman. “God bless you.” One person shouted “I love you” from the audience, which led Lohan to say “I love you” back.
The interview with Lohan resurfaced after the New York Times‘documentary Framing Britney Spears aired on FX and started broadcasting on Hulu. Part of the film looks at how media coverage negatively treated Spears and other young women in the 2000s. It also led fans to praise the old Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson for refusing to joke about Spears during a 2007 monologue.