Though Sir David Frost doesn't see his 1977 interviews with former President Richard Nixon as "an intellectual 'Rocky' " -- in the words of "Frost/Nixon" playwright and screenwriter Peter Morgan -- he does agree that the sessions had their "adversarial" moments.

Particularly, he told CNN, when the topic turned to the Watergate scandal.

"By halfway through the second day [of the interviews], we had got to the point that we had hoped to get to," he said. "And then it was a point of going further and trying to get more than we had really expected."

Nixon famously let down his guard, a moment depicted in in "Frost/Nixon," the new Ron Howard-directed film starring Frank Langella as Nixon and Michael Sheen as Frost.

"I'm saying when the president does it, that means it's not illegal," Nixon said during the interview, cementing his ignominy.