Peter Cook blames ex-wife Christie Brinkley's lack of emotional support for his affair, he tells Barbara Walters.
In an interview set to air Friday on ABC's "20/20," he says he cheated on the supermodel because "I was seeking a connection I could not find in my own marriage."
"I wanted a little acknowledgement, a little attention, a little thank-you every now and then for my efforts, for the amount of time I took to care for her and my family, for the wealth I was building. Just the tremendous amount of work I was putting into my family," he says.
Cook and Brinkley got married in 1996 and broke up a decade later, in a divorce that exposed his affair with 18-year-old office worker Diana Bianchi as well his expensive porn habit and a $300,000 effort to pay off Bianchi.
But Cook says when Bianchi came into his life, he and Brinkley were more like "brother and sister."
"My hope is that the world will see that I'm not the scumbag pervert that I've been painted to be," he tells Walters.
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