In a detailed interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the 65-year-old the iconic talk show host opened up about her 60 Minutes departure, her deal with Apple and much more.
Earlier this week, Oprah Winfrey received The Hollywood Reporter‘s first Empowerment in Entertainment Award. Right before receiving the honour, Winfrey spoke to The Hollywood Reporter and shared that she is no longer working on the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes among many other things.
“More than three decades later, Winfrey is a self-made billionaire (Forbes estimates her net worth at $2.8 billion) with lavish homes tucked behind gates and, yes, her own studio. She has a TV network, too, along with an eponymous magazine and a megadeal with Apple that will include a book club, documentaries and – she teases here – a potential series that would put her back in the interviewing chair. She’s also parlayed her iconic status into opportunities to educate and inspire worldwide,” reported THR.
According to Winfrey, she decided to quit, after being told that she was too emotional. She said that her emotional name delivery became a real issue for producers at the news magazine. “I think I did seven takes on just my name because it was ‘too emotional’. I go, is the too much emotion in the ‘Oprah’ part or the ‘Winfrey’ part?” shared Winfrey. “They would say, ‘All right, you need to flatten out your voice, there’s too much emotion in your voice’. So I was working on pulling myself down and flattening out my personality – which, for me, is actually not such a good thing,” she added.
She further went on to say, that it had been in the works from some time. “I’d actually gone to Jeff Fager and said I was going to be working with Apple and that it didn’t mean I would never do something but I would probably be taking all of my energies and putting them into whatever I wanted to do at Apple,” explained Winfrey.
“It was an interesting experience for me. I enjoyed working with the teams, and I’m probably going to work with some of the freelance people on my Apple stuff, but it was not the best format for me.”
The 65-year-old celebrity talk show host also spoke about her deal with Apple revealing that she will once again be doing the sit-downs that made her famous. “I don’t want to be in a daily rhythm of trying to come up with people to interview, but when there are people who are of the culture – like, last year, I would’ve wanted to sit down and have a conversation with Christine Blasey Ford,” she stated, adding that her tone would be no different than it has been since the early days of Harpo.
She continued, “My mission is always about letting other people know, ‘You’re not alone’. Obviously, we’re going to do the women in Hollywood and in the music business, but what was important to me was to be inclusive of waitresses and factory workers and nurses and nuns and people who you’d never imagine, so that the world can see themselves in their stories. I’ve been adamant that if you only tell the Hollywood story, you can only be partially heard.”
Talking about the backlash she received for getting involved with Leaving Neverland, she shared, “I haven’t had that much hateration since ‘The Puppy Episode’ with Ellen [Winfrey guested as the therapist on the 1997 Ellen sitcom episode in which Ellen DeGeneres’ character comes out].”
She further said, “I happened to be on Twitter for something, and somebody had said, ‘Oprah Winfrey is a disgrace to the race’ or something. Yeah, the whole race. I decided, you know what? This isn’t going to be healthy for me, so I just didn’t engage with it.”
– With information from The Hollywood Reporter
