Gayle King was somewhat caught off-guard by the request she received in her dressing room, even calling it “blackmail material.”
Her career as a television news anchor and reporter began in the early 1980s when she worked with local stations in Kansas and Connecticut.
Over 10 years ago, she joined CBS Mornings, where she continues to shine as one of the main anchors and hosts alongside Nate Burleson, Vladimir Duthiers, and Tony Dokoupil.
Like the competing morning program ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Mornings had their TV personalities participate in a recent trend.
It involved a blast from the past to surprise the anchors when they weren’t expecting it.
Gayle calls out CBS Mornings’ ‘blackmail material’ request
A video from CBS Mornings’ Instagram shows a woman off-camera approaching Gayle King, dressed in a purple dress, in a dressing room.
“Can you sign this for me, please?” the off-camera woman asks Gayle, handing her a photo and marker.
Gayle looks at it briefly before smiling and asking, “What are you gonna do with that?”
“That’s blackmail material,” she tells the woman as an old black-and-white headshot photo appears on the screen.
The footage shows Tony, Nate, and Adriana Diaz reacting as they get their old photos to sign.
After receiving a photo of his younger self wearing colorful body paint, Tony said an expletive as others laughed in the studio.
“I made 150 dollars, man. They had to paint me. I can’t work for the Senate now,” he said.
Nate also had a good time after seeing the photo he received, which featured three different shots of him from his football days. In each of the photos, he had a unique hairstyle.
“Look at the versatility of my hair,” he said, mentioning he had dreads and braids in two photos.
He referred to another of the hairstyles as the “Eminem or Slim Shady” look since he used to play for Detroit in the NFL. He said he’d sign it three ways for each hairstyle.
After seeing his photo, Vladimir chuckled and signed it, calling his younger self a “loser.”
Fans reacted to Gayle’s throwback photo
Following the CBS Mornings’ video upload on Instagram, many fans shared their thoughts about seeing Gayle’s older black-and-white photo.
“Gayle’s face said ‘I know you lying!'” one commenter said about the video.
Another commenter said, “Too funny. Always classy to be able to look back and laugh at oneself.”
One commenter told Gayle she looked good in the photo, while another suggested the “lawyer part” of Gayle’s mind was contemplating what someone might use her older photo for.
That image is already on the internet. Gayle’s same black-and-white photo appears on Oprah.com as part of their magazine’s September 2013 “hair issue,” in which Gayle recalled her earlier looks.
“I spent the ’80s getting blow-dried, teased, and sprayed within an inch of my life. It was a nasty period in news anchor hair history (I did the 5 o’clock news), but we all thought this was a good look at the time,” she said.
One of Gayle’s earliest jobs was anchoring WFSB, a local CBS station in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1981. That lasted for 18 years and probably featured multiple hairstyle updates.
In CBS Mornings’ recent video, she was still a good sport and signed her older photo, even holding it up and smiling next to it to show her earlier and current looks side-by-side.