Original subtitles

There's something attractive about the forbidden.

If I can see something that I shouldn't be watching,

they can create this joy

or this feeling of gratification,

especially when it comes to sex.

And our relationship with sex is constantly

changing with the technology.

Well, who doesn't wanna watch a good sex tape?

There is a strong interest. People are ravenous.

They wanna see it, particularly when it's a celebrity.

From the 1980s up until now,

we get a whole world of celebrities

who've been involved in sex tapes,

and they featured some of the most iconic moments

that have propelled pop culture forward and a little backward.

A tape was stolen from Tommy Lee and myself.

We really hadn't seen this before.

How did the tape get out there?

How did this happen? Why are you not erasing it?

And how did it get into the internet?

Like, how does this work?

Everybody was trying to see it.

We were building servers as fast as we could get 'em.

It's all my fault.

The biggest names, the smallest names,

some of the oddest characters,

people who you watch every day on television.

It's Colin Farrell, but what was most stunning

was the fact that the woman was a Black woman,

and that was actually very, very shocking to me.

I tell you, man, everybody likes a little spice.

I'm telling you, man.

Celebrity sex tapes

have such a hold on our consciousness.

Celebrity sex tapes perfectly combine

all the things that human beings are obsessed with--

power, beauty, fame, sex, transgression.

I saw the original tape.

I saw two people rolling on Ecstasy,

and one of them getting peed on in a bathtub.

You think A&E is gonna show that?

But it's not all fun and games.

There is a dark side to it as well.

Jayne Kennedy.

She was certainly Black America's sweetheart.

A sex tape made her go into hiding. It destroyed her.

I didn't wanna have anything to do with it.

I didn't want to see it.

I was very upset and very disappointed

in my friend Dustin.

He wanted attention,

but he also wanted to be back on the map again.

Mimi Faust is a great example of someone who went through this.

First of all, let's be clear. I don't watch porn.

So, for me to have a porn tape,

how bizarre can my life even get?

Farrah Abraham was not welcome with open arms

into the industry.

The animal that reality TV made is my daughter.

I'm grateful she's not dead.

I can't believe I have the best celebrity sex tape,

and I did all of this being depressed and lost.

A picture is worth a thousand words,

but a naked picture of Jennifer Lawrence

is worth a lot more to computer hackers.

It's just such a violation of privacy.

These are images from your phone.

Revenge porn was now known as a thing.

"Celebgate," as a term, implies that it's a scandal.

It's not a scandal. It's a crime.

In the Katie Hill story, these were very intimate photos.

You don't have ownership to your body anymore.

I'm leaving because of a misogynistic culture

that gleefully consumed my naked pictures.

Yikes. How were we so wrong?

Because we generally are fascinated

with everything celebrities do,

why would that not extend to sex as well?

Like, we care about the coffee they drink.

We care about the liquor they consume.

We care about where they shop.

You think we're not gon' care about how they [bleep]?

Like, of course we are.

You feel that icky feeling

that you're violating somebody,

and that's the allure of the celebrity sex tape.

We get to see them in the most intimate moment of their life.

There's a real sick joy in being able to take them apart.

What makes celebrity sex tapes so interesting--

it is a way of mainstreaming the conversation about sex.

This stuff wouldn't get talked about otherwise.

Sex tapes are huge.

It's encouraged a whole generation now

to produce sex tapes.

Yeah, you made servers crash.

All these celebrities started coming out with sex tapes.

She was straight up being like, "This worked for Kim,

and now it's gonna work for me.

And it got to the point where it was just getting absurd,

where it was like, okay, are we really leaking these tapes?

You guys are just leaking these. This is stupid.

I do wonder, how did we get here?

You can watch anything you want online today,

but there was a huge swath of time

where video stores were doing unbelievable business...

carrying regular feature films and adult movies.

CineFile Video--we were known all over the country--

as one of the more unique and wild video stores

to have ever existed.

It opened up in 1999.

Some of the genres we had were nunsploitation, Euro trash.

This is one of my favorite sections

that we ever created for the store.

"Shade Tippin'," where the lead character

was like... ♪ wah-wah tippin' their shades,

Wrestling bikers, kidnapping.

Of course, bikers and kidnapping always go well together.

We had all manner of customers, from celebrities

to folks that lived at the VA hospital up the street.

One of the things we were really proud of was the library

of bootleg celebrity sex tapes.

In the '70s and early '80s, the sex tapes

were all underground.

They were sold kind of in the black market,

whatever the black market was.

The legality of all these bootleg tapes

was always in question.

If it was something that was possibly

gonna get us in trouble, we would make it a free rental,

So that you had to get a paid rental in addition

to getting this very illicit thing.

And I think that any customer of ours over time learned

you know, if something has a "free rental" sticker on it,

then it was fairly likely

the coolest [bleep] in the entire store.

This is where all the magic happened.

The customers that would come in

for the underground bootleg sex tapes,

like truffle hunters,

they knew what the cover boxes looked like.

There was one that purported to be Barbra Streisand,

but it wasn't. It was clearly not Barbra Streisand.

It was just another lady with a slightly larger nose.

The Chuck Berry pee tape.

Sadly, I have seen the Chuck Berry pee tape.

The illicit nature of these bootleg tapes

definitely had a value for the customers.

Like, you weren't supposed to be seeing this,

and maybe the MPAA would come to your home

and storm it, black trench coat-style...

if you happen to have a tape

of Barbra Streisand in a 30-second porn loop.

CineFile would get a lot

of bootleg material through other collectors.

In my mind, it's like this sinister bad guy,

like the Penguin, you know, like in "Batman,"

this, like, sweaty guy that's, like, in this, like,

you know, a hoarder, and he's, like, in his little basement.

He's like... "I'm gonna make these videos,

like, these videos I have."

As the '80s progressed,

there's this kind of elite trader circle, it seems,

that will get their hands on this footage

before the general public does.

Like a gold circle of sex tape collectors.

Well, about 30 years ago,

people all over the world were trading celebrity sex tapes.

If the public's interested in something

or they wanna see it, they're gonna find a way to.

The celebrity thing is the major reason

that people would wanna see 'em.

And people that aren't particularly into porno

would wanna see them because

they're basically into sleazy voyeurism.

This is "Porno of the Stars, Volume 1."

This has Marilyn Monroe, which is--

is--is thought of as fake.

You could run together any number of VCRs.

You could have, like, a master VCR running

into five more VCRs and make five copies at once.

The VCR changed porn and our entire lives.

I bought a great VCR at Walmart. Now I'm back for some good tape.

It was revolutionary.

The VCR-- you could tape and record on it.

A camera and video recorder in one.

- Get a close-up, Joe. - Yeah.

Before the VHS tape,

all the average citizen had was a Super 8 camera,

and then you'd have to have the film developed,

and then you'd have to have a projector,

and nobody had these things. When the VHS tape arrived,

suddenly there was a player you could have in your home.

You could watch movies, and you could watch dirty movies.

The VHS machine and the tapes

were one of the biggest innovations in entertainment,

much like television, and it seems like

every time there's a new kind of technology,

sex is the first thing that takes advantage of it.

I always think, like, the cavemen,

when they discovered fire,

the first thing they did was try to put their [bleep] in it.

You know what I mean?

Whether it's the printing press with sexual imagery...

Whether it's photography with nude photos...

Everything that's invented,

the first thing they use it for is porn.

During the '80s, as soon as the VHS came out,

amateurs-- they got the camcorder,

and instead of doing the kid's birthday,

they started making their own movies.

Make your own.

Oh, my God.

This weighs, like, 40-- this weighs more than my car.

- This is old school. - This is a VHS camcorder.

First of all, it's been so long, I don't even know where to look

through the-- look through the hole.

Those old sex tapes were recorded on something like this.

Humans are consumed by sex.

It is an important part of our lives.

It is a constant source of fascination and speculation.

And so as technology progresses,

our ability to use technology for sexual purposes progresses.

I suppose the camcorder

helped a certain kind of porn genre,

the amateur style of porn.

It wouldn't be long before a celebrity

recorded themselves having sex, and that recording would

hit the mainstream and change everything.

The camera that was used was connected

with a cable like this one.

At some point, you see

this hand coming in and caressing them.

And then they were recording him.

I think of the '80s,

and I think of everybody's shock and awe of the sex tape.

Do you wish you hadn't gone to Atlanta?

It was celebrity journalism getting started.

Which producers are available? Which reporters are available?

Get your asses down to Atlanta now and get the tape.

That's all that mattered.

I think it was just the perfect storm.

My morals have changed quite a bit since then,

and I would not have watched the sex tape today.

8 mark.

And I have to mention, I was a female at that point.

The tale of the sex tape.

The "Rolling Stone" came out, and there was a picture

of Jan, Tara, and myself.

We were definitely friends.

It was interesting because they named me

as one of the two ladies.

Two women, who at this time are only known

by the names Jan and Tara.

This would be Tara, and this is Jan,

and we worked together.

The salon was the Super Hair Three-13

in Marietta, Georgia.

I worked there from '81 to '91.

Jan and Tara were both assistants,

and it was a New Wave, punk rock kind of vibe to the salon.

The people at Marietta are more conservative,

so it was almost like a show, I think, for them to come in

just to see what people were wearing.

That was one great thing about the Super Hair Three-13,

and these kids in Atlanta--

they were the hairdressers and people who love to play

with their hair and just be outrageous.

They were just the outcasts.

Everyone was very close-knit.

We all worked together, played together.

The '80s, what a time.

Shiny clothes and tight pants.

The '80s were, like, you know, the coke came in.

Whoo!

I swear, like, I think I snorted in every stall in New York.

The drugs became different in the '80s--

you know, Quaaludes.

♪ If I could ask you

It was a time of indulgence,

the whole "greed is good." We out here being fabulous.

Crazy drug use, and also wild abandon

and perversity and shocking.

♪ Ooh, ooh, I want to understand you ♪

Growing up in the '80s, it was like a cultural rebellion

was taking place, like, all across America,

where people were trying to find themselves, find their identity.

It was a fearlessness.

♪ And English is my second language ♪

We would spend a lot of time at a club called Weekends,

where RuPaul was dancing on a box on the dance floor.

And then we would go

to Backstreet a lot, which is a gay club.

♪ Lost in translation

And then there was another club that was the 24-hour club,

and you know you were in deep if you went there.

♪ Lost in translation

Sex was all over the place. The culture was sexual.

People's dress was sexual.

And a lot of sex. A lot of sex going on.

This is Club Rio,

a popular night spot here in Atlanta.

Club Rio wasn't a club that we would frequent

'cause it was more of a heterosexual scene.

We were there earlier. We were doing a photo shoot

for the salon, for marketing.

So, obviously we did hair,

and we ended up lingering on into the early evening,

and that is when the celebrities came in.

Well, they are young, rich, and almost famous,

and they are desirable to just about every female under 20.

They're officially known as the Brat Pack.

The Brat Pack were very emblematic of the 1980s.

This was a new breed of celebrity.

Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson.

They were young. They were rich. They were white.

They were popular. They were everywhere.

Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald.

"The Breakfast Club," "The Outsiders,"

and the new "St. Elmo's Fire."

We are friends. We're all close.

And in the industry,

it's nice to have your friends to support you.

And Rob Lowe--he was kind of starting to be seen

as a person with some chops,

but he was also the ultimate teen wet dream,

if we can say that.

Rob Lowe was like, everything.

Every girl had a crush on him.

There was, like, an edginess about him.

He had the blue eyes. Everybody loved this dude.

Rob Lowe is acknowledged

to have the prettiest face of the class of '85.

Celebrities were worshipped in the '80s.

People see celebrities as these godlike things

put up on a pedestal.

Celebrity culture was like a mythology of its own,

because these weren't people like us.

These--These are people that were on the television.

It was just this fascination

with people that had managed to transcend normal human life.

We got a lot of celebrities here tonight.

One of the big celebrities, the actor Rob Lowe, is with us--

one who followed Dukakis all over this country.

I mean, look at Rob Lowe.

In July of 1988, he didn't go off to Cabo for a weekend.

He went to Atlanta, Georgia,

to the Democratic National Convention.

- It's democracy. It's spec-- - Absolutely.

It's not a spectator sport. Everybody should do their part,

whether it's me or you or Justine.

Everybody should get out and do what they can.

The night before the beginning of the Democratic Convention,

Rob Lowe showed up at this place, the Club Rio.

It was the Studio 54 of Atlanta.

So, if you're a celebrity from out of town,

we're gonna go to the hottest club.

And according to the people who work here,

Rob Lowe made it a regular hangout

during the convention,

often partying in these VIP suites behind me

with fellow Brat Packers Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy.

I first learned that Rob Lowe was in the club

because I was standing at the bar,

and Ally Sheedy and Judd Nelson came in and stood beside me.

I had some crazy glasses on, and he complimented me

on the glasses, and then I realized,

oh, [bleep], that's, you know, somebody famous.

Well, they give Rob Lowe the celebrity treatment.

They brought him to a special booth.

They put up a little velvet rope,

gave him some champagne, and all the women were lined up.

Jan and Tara were waiting outside of this private area.

He walked by, and someone said, "Oh, she has to meet you"--

she being Jan.

I think particularly Jan was excited to meet Rob Lowe

because Tara was a lesbian.

Jan was going through an experimental stage

with her sexuality at that time, and I think Tara

was there to provide that relationship for her

at that time.

The two girls were dying to meet Rob Lowe,

and I had the opportunity to introduce them, and...

They were friends of yours?

- Yes, they were. - So you introduced them?

Yes, I introduced them, not thinking,

just, you know, starstruck. They're starstruck.

- I just introduced them. - And he took a liking to them?

Yes, he did.

So, when they left the club,

they went back to Rob Lowe's hotel room.

When they arrived in front of Lowe's hotel,

they emerged unnoticed amidst the stretch limos.

Rob Lowe had a video recorder.

Rob is a celebrity. Rob is rich. Rob has the latest technology.

Because Rob was going to do a documentary

about the Democratic Convention.

The camera that was used was connected

with a cable like this one to the TV set in the hotel room

so everybody could see the action.

Rob Lowe passed out.

And Jan and Tara... stole the tape...

...and apparently $200 out of his wallet.

That next week at work,

Tara and Jan brought the tape in

to the owner of our salon.

And said, "We [bleep] Rob Lowe. We have the tape of it.

We can't watch it. Can you help us change this tape?"

There are 70 million VCRs

in American homes right now.

People don't know how to use them.

He gets some

freelance videographer friend of his to help,

and they make two copies.

Yeah, I think he was. Yeah.

He could take... things and put 'em on--on tape.

I didn't know him personally. I just knew that he did some

recording for us at the salon,

but he was obviously friends with the owner of the salon.

He gave the tape back to Jan,

who apparently hid it in her closet.

He may have been the one who made copies of the tape

for so many people.

And I think this is how

the [bleep] hit the fan, if you will.

At the salon, we were definitely watching it

on a television with the VHS player,

I guess, is what it was, and it was a small group of us.

We were huddled together watching the sex tape,

and it was... it was actually quiet.

We were all, I think, just watching a little bit in awe.

It was slightly uncomfortable,

only because watching Jan and Tara

was a little uncomfortable.

Old-timey video recorder.

Most of that segment is

Rob shooting the two women having sex together.

At some point, you see, like,

his hand coming in and caressing them.

And then there's one part

where Tara explains on Jan where her anatomy is.

"This is the [bleep]. This is..." et cetera.

And then they took the recorder from Rob Lowe,

and they were recording him.

This is crazy.

Is this the camera that Rob Lowe used?

This is what changed Rob Lowe's world.

Jan turns to the camera and kisses it

and says, "This is so much fun," and then the camera goes off.

Word spread. People were

talking about, you know, a Hollywood player

was in big trouble.

I was in my office, and I got a call from Burt Kearns.

It was May 20, 1989.

I was the managing editor of "A Current Affair."

Rob Lowe was in a club, and there's a sex tape,

and we've got to find it,

and we've got to find the girls that were in the sex tape.

The Rob Lowe sex tape--

Club Rio is projecting this on the screens.

There were rumors that they were running this tape

over and over again to the backdrop of the music.

I don't know how it got leaked.

I feel like somehow, maybe the one

who made copies of the tape for so many people

got the tape out there to Club Rio.

We will never know until we unearth it

in an archaeological expedition somewhere.

But nobody ever keeps a secret. Like, nobody.

There was more than one copy. This tape was everywhere.

"Get this [bleep] tape.

Get your asses down to Atlanta now."

Jump on a plane. Get to Atlanta. I was there that day.

"Do not come back without this tape.

Get the tape. Get... the... tape."

A reporter shows up in Atlanta.

The producer shows up in Atlanta.

I was staying at the Atlanta Hilton

where Rob stayed, trying to hit up

the housekeeping staff

for any tidbits I could find.

It was a frenzy to talk to anybody.

The scene was crazy. There were rowdy bars.

I was in my 20s,

and I was by myself with a camera crew.

So, I was a little nervous.

Well, I remember finding this bouncer,

and he was really tied into the people at Club Rio.

And that's how I found out that the girls lived in Marietta...

...and that they worked at a hair salon.

The salon was covered with reporters outside.

I mean, cameras 24/7

trying to get in the salon to get an appointment,

just to talk about it, and it was a real [bleep]show.

The people of Marietta were more conservative,

so to think that we were part of something like that,

then we were judged as Devil worshippers,

and we, you know, sacrificed goats and drank their blood.

You know, just really crazy stuff.

It was such a shock that the tape got out there

and that we were, even though weren't in the tape personally,

that the tape got out there and that it was just shocking.

We find out more that the local Fox station

and "A Current Affair" was a Fox show, had the tape,

and they were running parts of it on their local news.

The guy from "Inside Edition" is also looking for the tape.

This guy happened to be

Geraldo Rivera's younger brother, Craig Rivera.

Our guys--they said, you know,

"This--this Rivera guy is right on our case."

I said, "Well, do something to keep Rivera occupied."

Well, our reporter called Rivera at his hotel room...

...and said, uh,

"I understand you're looking for this Rob Lowe sex tape."

"Yes, I am." "Well, um, okay. Uh, I want $5,000."

"Okay, fine." "Just wait. I'll deliver it to you."

Craig Rivera waited in his hotel room.

Yeah, he might... He might still be there.

Uh, he--he did not get the tape.

We get the tape back.

Monday morning, we know that we have the exclusive

at "A Current Affair."

We ran it to death.

The full home video that allegedly stars Rob Lowe

covers a wide range of activities,

from a batting session with the Atlanta Braves

to a meeting with Tom Hayden, and then the tape gets darker.

Jan's mom found the tape that she had hidden in her closet,

which she probably shouldn't have done,

because if she knows anything about being a mother,

they're always gonna snoop and find your [bleep].

So, her mother found the tape,

and I'm thinking that that's how this whole lawsuit got started.

An Atlanta mother says he is the man in a pornographic tape

that involved her underage daughter.

Could land him in jail for up to 20 years.

Rob Lowe was now facing, you know, 20 years in jail.

Rob Lowe denies that he's the star

of tonight's main story.

An Atlanta mother says he is the man in pornographic tapes

that involved her underage daughter.

We knew right away that Rob Lowe was in trouble

because it was the district attorney

who announced that Rob Lowe was now facing,

you know, 20 years in jail.

The age of consent to have sex in Georgia was 14 at the time,

but the age of consent to have your sex filmed was 18.

14 is incredibly young.

It's completely insane that that was the law in 1988.

I don't think a 16-year-old can consent to sex with an adult.

I don't think they're ready.

I don't think they have the maturity for it.

The club's position is she had a fake ID.

Rob Lowe says that he's done nothing wrong,

and his lawyers asked a judge in Atlanta today

to throw out a lawsuit against the young actor.

He felt betrayed. Felt like, "I was in the [bleep] club.

I met this girl.

She was supposed to be 21. She certainly acted 21,

and I did what consenting adults do."

I really don't think that Rob Lowe had any idea

that he was sleeping with an underage person.

All week, everybody's trying to be getting

some comment from you.

Do you have anything to say to anybody? Nothing at all?

Rob Lowe went into hiding. He didn't come out

and, you know, give-- give a press conference.

Lowe's been lying low

since that scandal hit the fans a few months ago.

He didn't take it well.

He stayed in his house for a good four months.

We went back to Los Angeles,

and my assignment was to find Rob

and to distract the other reporters.

So, we found a Rob Lowe lookalike

and a limousine,

and we had the limousine pull up,

and we had the Rob Lowe lookalike

come out of the bushes,

and all the reporters from all the other shows

just took off after this limousine.

And meanwhile, we had this tray of bagels and lox in the car.

So we got onion and egg

and water bagels, and we got some lox,

the good stuff from Greenblatt's and cream cheese

and, like, more orange juice than anyone could ever drink.

And I was just wondering, 'cause I know you're in there,

'cause where else would you go?

Um, will you come out and have a little picnic with us?

Some other person--

I actually think it might have been Chris Penn--

opened the door and said, "What are you doing here?"

"I'm bringing bagels and lox to Rob.

I wanna know how he feels about his sex tape."

And, um, I was turned away,

but they took the bagels and lox.

Actor Rob Lowe will not go to jail.

Atlanta prosecutors say they won't charge Lowe because

he has agreed to do 20 hours of community service.

He will work with disadvantaged young people in Los Angeles.

So, in the end, there were no criminal charges.

The civil suit was settled for an undisclosed amount,

and, um...

that was it.

I never saw either one of them again.

It was like they disappeared off the face of the earth.

Uh, they were there one day,

and then both of them were gone the next.

I never, since then, have seen either one of them.

No. No.

No idea. Like I said, here one day, gone the next.

Now, last night, we asked if you thought all the publicity

surrounding the Rob Lowe case could harm his career.

And here are the results of that poll.

Many thousands of phone calls.

34% of you thought it would harm his career,

while about twice that number, 66%,

believed it would do no harm to Rob Lowe's career.

Chin up, Rob. We'll be back in a minute.

At the time, the "L.A. Times"

interviews an anonymous Hollywood exec and asked,

"Do you think this is gonna have an impact on his career?"

And he's, like, "No. You know, the only way this would

impact his career is if it had been a gay video."

The idea of him being perhaps sexually involved

with an adult man,

somebody who was able to consent,

would be more controversial and more damning to his career.

I don't think it hurt his career one bit.

Obviously, he's still out there doing what he does,

which is a little shocking, because if it were

in this day and age and a celebrity was caught

making a sex tape with a 16-year-old,

I think that it would be a completely different story.

The sex tape sent Rob Lowe to rehab.

It led him to rethink his life. It led him to rethink

the friends he was hanging out with.

I may be a-a known actor, and I may be a public figure,

but I'm a human being, and I hurt,

and I'm embarrassed, and I have family that didn't ask for this,

and, um, it's been very, very difficult.

Rob Lowe would not be the Rob Lowe we know today.

- Yeah. - It was a big thing at the time,

but you write very eloquently about it in your--in your book.

It's one of the reasons why I got sober.

You know, it's like I woke up one day and was like,

what am I doing with my life? - And people kind of forgave him.

He settled down, and he was able to, you know,

move--move on from that and establish a career.

In the same era, there's a tape

that leaks of Jayne Kennedy, the actress-journalist,

and her husband having sex.

She was the co-anchor of "NFL Today."

She was also an actress on "The Six Million Dollar Man"

and "Sanford and Son," and "Starsky & Hutch."

Jayne Kennedy--

not enough people know her story, and they should.

And a sex tape ruined it all.

I don't know who Jayne Kennedy is.

No.

No.

Jayne Kennedy-- she worked for CBS?

When the Dallas Cowboys arrived in New York late yesterday,

CBS had a cassette of "Too Tall" Jones' bout

ready for them to view.

For a lot of us who are in sports media now,

Jayne Kennedy--she's the OG.

She was the Halle Berry of the '70s and '80s but in sports.

She had a national presence as a Black woman in sports,

especially to be on the NFL's premier show as a Black woman.

For the next hour, we're going to preview

the upcoming NFL season.

You'll see the teams to remember and the ones to forget.

She was one of the GOATs in media.

Nobody else could get Muhammad Ali to interview him,

and she got him.

Jayne Kennedy was huge.

But not only was she, you know, a great broadcaster,

I mean, she was considered to just be a queen.

Miss Ohio!

Jayne Kennedy was the first Black Miss Ohio in 1970.

She's from Wickliffe and is 18 years old.

At 19, I left Ohio, and I said I wanted to go out

and try the world of Hollywood.

Jayne Kennedy was also an actress,

and she was on "The Six Million Dollar Man"...

- Okay, bye. - Take care,

-..."Sanford and Son." - I love you, Lamont.

I love you, Brenda.

...and "Starsky & Hutch."

She definitely was on "The Love Boat" a lot.

I remember having very warm feelings towards Jayne Kennedy.

She became the co-anchor of "NFL Today" in 1978.

With her being the first Black woman to do that,

it was just sort of like, okay, this is another

historic milestone in her career of historic milestones.

Leon Isaac Kennedy was Jayne Kennedy's husband.

You know, at the time, it was like he was this big,

kind of tough guy and good-looking

and was known as being, like, a big-time actor.

He was a stand-up guy during this time.

He had a lot going for him in terms

that he was kind of like a Sugar Ray Leonard lookalike.

So, they had worked with each other on the set

of a movie called "Body and Soul."

If you care anything at all about me, you wouldn't do this,

because this might be easy to you,

but it took me a long time to get you out of my system.

I believe she did win an NAACP Image Award for.

I guess, for the time,

they were what we call today relationship goals.

It's like, here you had

this graceful, beautiful, intelligent,

smart, dynamic woman with this Hollywood actor.

They were considered the perfect match.

They were kind of an "it" couple.

And Black people were really struggling

for our images in-- in pop culture.

We wanted to own them. We wanted to feel vested in them.

So, now we-- we finally had somebody.

The school system always said, you grow up, you be a housewife,

a teacher, or a secretary,

and that's basically it for young ladies.

And there's so much more that life has to offer.

Jayne Kennedy is a pioneer, so it just seemed really strange

that all of a sudden, she was gone.

It was like Jayne Kennedy vanished almost,

and I didn't know why.

The first celebrity sex tape I ever saw

was the Jayne Kennedy sex tape

that was, I guess, filmed in the late '70s.

The person in the video with her was Leon Isaac Kennedy,

her husband.

They were a couple. They were in love.

This was for them, and if you had a Betamax, you were rich.

So, they obviously had the equipment. They did it.

It was an intimate moment, and then it somehow... got out.

I remember I couldn't believe that this existed.

But you have to understand,

this wasn't something you could buy legally.

It wasn't something that was on cable television,

and it was distributed in the underground,

and I think a friend of mine showed it to me.

It was very grainy.

So, the story of the sex tape is kind of opaque.

This was kind of before we even really had the language

to talk about sex tapes,

but somehow footage of her and her husband, Leon Kennedy,

having sex leaked.

When this tape came out,

it was all the conversation in the barbershop.

It was like the Loch Ness Monster

of sex tapes in terms of you know somebody

that may have said that they've seen it,

but they weren't able to tell you much about it

besides, like, the broad notes.

Back in the '80s, if something like this comes out,

it's kind of shocking 'cause we don't know about this,

and this seems kind of pornography-adjacent.

Even though you're a married couple.

It's just like, what is going on here? What is this?

It was such a gross invasion of her life.

For her to be the one to pay the price

for something that should have never happened to her

makes it that much more sickening.

It did tarnish her image, and we owed her better.

She was married. That was her husband.

It wasn't any of our business.

It was really awful because it--it ruined her image.

I've lost, maybe I'd say, 60% of acting roles

and things like that.

Jayne Kennedy was fired from CBS really famously

from her sportscasting job, but that was because

she was doing work for other people.

But from what I understand,

she had a really hard time getting work after word spread

that, oh, my God, this woman has a sexuality.

Can you imagine this person has sex?

Their sex tape scandal was considered to be

the origin point of celebrity sex tapes,

and it had a devastating impact,

mostly on Jayne Kennedy's career.

She--She took that brunt.

You don't always wanna be the first for somethin',

and sadly, that was her.

At that time, it was not viewed the way

that these things are viewed now

or even as they came to be viewed after them.

And I can't say that they're wrong.

Like, that tape kind of ruined her professional career,

or at least at the very least,

the perception in which she was seen.

Jayne Kennedy was so far ahead of her time,

and to see this beautiful woman on the sidelines,

you would never think that they could do that.

The one thing that has been consistent

about how Black women are treated is erasure.

And Jayne Kennedy--

she had a couple things working against her.

The phenomenon of what it was

combined with her being Black and a woman.

I don't think she had much of a career after that at all,

which may have had something to do with gender and race.

Jayne Kennedy is the perfect example of...

the double standards,

and I just want there to be one standard.

I would like there to be fairness.

When it comes to how those tapes or leaks are viewed,

women are gonna pay the ultimate penalty,

especially if you're a Black woman.

Now, Rob Lowe-- he never had to stop doing

the thing that he loved because he's a man.

And Jayne Kennedy's not gonna get that grace,

because the penalty is always harsher for women.

I had worked my butt off for nearly 10 years

before I even joined the "NFL Today."

You know the proverbial three strikes?

Well, strike one, I was a woman.

Strike two, I was Black.

So I really only ever had one chance, just one,

and I was determined that I was not going to strike out.

I think it's just really tragic the way that her story unfolded,

and she's somebody who we should be giving

a lot of flowers to,

especially if you're a Black woman,

you're in sports media, 'cause she totally

opened a door that was not open for us at all.

And so I don't look at her as somebody that has

anything to be ashamed of.

I look at Jayne Kennedy as-- as a hero.

I was in Washington, D.C., a couple of years ago,

and I was at the Smithsonian Museum

of African American History and Culture

in the Oprah Winfrey wing,

and they had a picture of me on the desk at CBS Sports,

and, um, alongside Nat King Cole,

Diahann Carroll, the Supremes,

and Nichelle Nichols, Don Cornelius,

and that's when it hit me that I was living history.

There was an incremental growth,

the video camera as a home item,

and the quality got better and better and better.

And so the idea that

you're gonna film yourself having sex,

that idea became very mainstream.

This is a sexy, sneaky little guy.

I can definitely imagine somebody hiding one of these.

I don't think you could be alive and conscious

without being familiar with that tape.

The media narrative was that she wanted

to be doing this, and this was the only way

that she could be portrayed.

We were told to just don't ask her about it.

We're gonna take you to see the tape.

Put a bandana over my head.

I was thrown in a hatchback of a Honda.

Drugs, paranoid. She's flipping out.

Everything exploded.

That sex tape became a financial revolution.

Do scoundrels do what they want?

If they can get away with it, sure.

We're a sick society.

And the victims can do nothing.

How do you prepare for your husband to betray you?

People call it free speech, when, really, it's abuse.

The trauma it causes and how it spirals from there.

I just tried to just bury myself like it wasn't happening.

It's the saddest thing to feel that way.

How do you get off of this hamster wheel of hell?

How do you do it?

Uh, okay, you're gonna name names,

and if I disclose to you that I know who you're talking about,

I'm disclosing secrets, so you really shouldn't do that.