Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand, was recently interviewed on the Australian version of "60 Minutes" in a segment many viewers called "creepy," "sexist," and "cringeworthy."
Veteran "60 Minutes" reporter Charles Wooley told Arden, who became New Zealand's youngest prime minister in more than century last October at age 37, that he is "smitten" by her, later adding that he has not met a prime minister "so young and not so many so smart, and never one so attractive," BBC News reported.
Some of the questions centered around Ardern's recent announcement that she is expecting a child with partner Clarke Gayford.
"One really important political question that I want to ask you, and that is what exactly is the date that the baby's due?" Wooley asked Ardern and Gayford. "It's interesting how much people have been counting back to the conception date."
Ardern told Wooley that the baby was conceived when the "election was over," but declined to give additional details.
Despite the questions, Ardern told local media that she did not find the interview questions sexist or insulting, CNN reported, citing Radio New Zealand.
"I just wasn't particularly fazed by any of it," Ardern told reporters. She did, though, say the question about her child's conception was "a little too much information."
Wooley later defended his questions to New Zealand's Newstalk ZB, saying that it is "not a good time to be a journalist," according to CNN.
"If you say someone is attractive . . . I think you should relist 'attractive' in the thesaurus, about 50 choices from good looking to gorgeous to likeable — there's so many different meanings," he said. "I'm going with winning. Winning is one of the alternatives in my directory."
Social media, though, was unforgiving about the interview.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.