‘Very sick’: Shelley Duvall’s infamous Dr Phil interview

Years before her death, a clearly mentally unwell Shelley Duvall sat down for an interview with Dr. Phil. The results were disastrous.

In the wake of Shelley Duvall’s passing today, many may reflect on her iconic performance in the 1980 horror classic The Shining. Some have also been reminded of her highly criticised 2016 Dr. Phil interview.

The conversation, seen by critics as unethical and exploitative, featured signs of Duvall’s struggle with mental illness, including her telling Dr. Phil McGraw, with reference to her Popeye co-star, the late Robin Williams, “I don’t think he is dead.”

When asked where she thinks he is, she replied, “Shape-shifting,” and noted that she’s seen him.

As seen in the promotion of the interview at the time, she also told McGraw that she “think[s] there’s a whirring disc inside [her]” and confessed that she was “very sick” and said she “need[s] help,” to which McGraw replied, “Well, that’s why I’m here.”

Dr Phil was accused of exploiting Duvall’s mental health struggles.

A clearly unwell Duvall spoke of human shape shifters in the interview.

A recording of the full interview is up on YouTube.

In a 2021 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Duvall said that with respect to McGraw, she “found out the kind of person he is the hard way.”

“My mother didn’t like him, either. A lot of people, like Dan, said, ‘You shouldn’t have done that, Shelley,’” she recalled, referring to her partner, Dan Gilroy. THR reported that Duvall had “submitted to the interview without Gilroy’s knowledge.”

“He started calling my mother,” Duvall added. “She told him, ‘Don’t call my daughter anymore.’ But he started calling my mother all the time trying to get her to let me talk to him again.”

Meanwhile McGraw, while speaking with Chris Wallace during a June 2023 appearance on Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?, claimed that he “do[es]n’t regret what [he] did,” but rather “regret[s] that it was promoted in a way that people thought was unbecoming,” per Entertainment Weekly.

Duvall in the 1977 film Annie Hall with Woody Allen.

“There are parts of that story that I haven’t talked about and won’t talk about in specific, but I can say generally that we worked with her family,” he said. “We worked with her for over a year off camera after that fact, and providing her opportunities for inpatient and outpatient psychiatric care. I can’t tell you the extent we went to.”

He added, “And the people that were critical of it, nobody ever asked them what they ever did to try and help her. And the answer is not a damn thing.”

As noted by EW, a Dr. Phil spokesperson had iterated similar sentiments in a statement to THR in 2021, noting, in part, that they “view every Dr. Phil episode, including Miss Duvall and her struggle with mental illness, as an opportunity to share relatable, useful information and perspective with our audiences,” and that Duvall “declined [their] initial offer for inpatient treatment that would have included full physical and mental evaluations, giving her a chance to privately manage her challenges.”

This story originally appeared on Decider and is republished here with permission.

Originally published as ‘Very sick’: Shelley Duvall’s infamous Dr Phil interview