Tom's Life Bits

Lynn Sherr December 26, 2010

Oprah Winfrey perfectly understands the power—and potential pain—of her name. As a child in Milwaukee she watched Romper Room, whose host, Miss Nancy, peered into her “magic mirror” and greeted her young viewers. “I can see Susie and Jimmy and Bobby,” Miss Nancy might say, eliciting yelps of delight from children at home. Not little Oprah. “I used to stand there in front of the black-and-white Magnavox thinking, Maybe today?” she tells me. She would move from one side of the TV set to the other, “thinking Miss Nancy would see me. Waiting for her to say hello to Oprah. Of course that never happened. She was handed a list of names and saw nobody!” Oprah reminisces slowly, hands tucked protectively under her legs. “I would have to say that my deepest feeling about myself growing up, the word that would best describe how I felt, would be lonely. And alone. It added to that feeling that there’s nobody like me.” She shifts into the present, grinning. “Now,” she adds playfully, “that’s a pretty good feeling!”

Half a century later, isolation is unthinkable. Oprah’s days are nonstop, her success unprecedented: The Oprah Winfrey Show has been the top daytime talk show since its debut in 1986. Starting Jan. 1, she goes 24/7 with the launch of the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) on cable, reaching nearly 80 million homes on what is now the Discovery Health channel. The programs include familiar faces, new series, and emotional excursions into miracles and family roots. OWN is a 50/50 partnership with Discovery—their idea, their money, her genius, her…well, name. A name that everyone knows today.

Oprah greets me in her living-room-size office at Harpo Studios in Chicago. Dog toys clutter one corner; twin shelves hold 15 shiny Emmys; an elegant curved desk dominates. “I spend more time here than I do at home, so it’s important that it be comfortable,” she says, touching signed books, presidential photos. Most cherished: the snap she took of her columned house on a mountain in Hawaii, framed by double rainbows.

See photos of Oprah Winfrey

Wearing a navy jogging suit, white T-shirt, and ballet flats—comfort clothes after hours of taping—she’s more girlfriend than chairwoman, quick to giggle and totally focused. She sinks into her couch to discuss her new venture, which she’ll oversee from California after The Oprah Winfrey Show goes off the air in September. But there will still be plenty of Oprah on OWN. She has creative control, which means ultimate responsibility for 1200 hours of original and acquired programming in the first year, plus the burden of delivering her audience—and the entire, magical Oprah brand. An immense challenge, even for a superstar.

PARADE As you’re counting down to the launch of OWN, how do you feel? First it was, “Wowee, omigosh, a network!” And then it was, “What in the world have I done?” and, “Can I really do this?” So I had a lot of anxiety about it.

After you made the deal? Yes. I was questioning, Why don’t I build a boat and sail around the world? Why don’t I learn French and find a nice little house in Provence? I could see myself bicycling with my baguettes and the whole thing. But I talked it over with my friends, and they all said, “You’re not going to be happy doing nothing.”

What’s OWN about? It is mindful television. I think so much of television is a minefield that just zaps your energy, wastes your time. What I want to do is build a channel that is a respite for your mind, an oasis of stimulation, that you come away from with little pieces of light. I’m aiming for a moment where somebody could say, “I never thought of it that way before.” I just love that.

A Day in Oprah's Life: What She Makes Stedman For Dinner and Much More!

How many of the shows are your idea? Master Class. Finding Sarah [a six-part documentary with Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, premiering in spring]. That came from an interview I did this summer with her. We had a moment of real connection, watching the tape of her trying to get £500,000 [for access to Prince Andrew]. She said she didn’t want to go into bankruptcy. I said, “But when you look at that tape, don’t you see a morally bankrupted person? The one thing you were trying to avoid, you already are.” She said, “I never thought of it that way before.”

Ah, there you go again! I remember the last thing I said to her when I left that interview: “Don’t let me see you on Dancing with the Stars.” She started e-mailing me and at one point asked what did I think of her doing a celebrity chef show. And I said, “That’s not going to help you. How are you going to rehabilitate yourself on a celebrity chef show? You should be working on yourself.”

You’re tough. I said, “I’ve never mentioned it because I don’t want you to think I’m trying to use you, but if you’re going to do TV, this is what you should do.”

And she said? “Let me think about it. I’d have to expose myself, and what does that really mean?” I said, “ All the things in your e-mails are so fascinating.” Like, she sent me an e-mail about how it’s so difficult to give up going to Spain this year. And I said, “You have no money. People who don’t have money don’t go to Spain on holiday. Hello!”

And now you’ve got her doing a show. The great benefit of having your own channel is that you can be walking down the street. . . The other day I was in a restaurant, [and there was] the most handsome waiter. I was like, “Well, what are you interested in doing? You have a very good TV face.” [ laughs] I look at everything. If I have an idea, it feels like a huge paint box. So I have moved from “Omigod, what am I going to do?” to “I can do anything.”

You’ve said, “I know that as I start out on this next chapter there will be some mistakes and what others perceive as failures.” What will you perceive as a failure? What will be a failure is if nobody comes and watches this network. What others will perceive as failure is if some shows don’t succeed. I’m concerned about the bigger overall picture: my belief that people are basically good and want to see the good in them reflected through their experiences and the shows that they watch. This is a gamble I’m taking. I believe that the banal state of television, the kind of insipid space that we’re in—that you can have as many channels as we have and not find anything that really interests you—means that to a great extent we’ve lost our way.

As a nation? No. I think that television programmers program to the lowest common denominator. I happened to be on the treadmill one night and passed one of the Housewives shows—I don’t know which city—and literally my mouth was open ’cause I thought, “This is on television?” I recognize that there’s a whole group of people who find that very entertaining. I wonder for how long. I think that there are people who want to be fed just a little more.

In all the years that you’ve been doing such successful television, what have you learned about people? Everybody just wants to be heard. Toni Morrison said that what every child wants to know is, Do your eyes light up when I enter the room? Did you hear me and did what I say mean anything to you? That’s all they’re looking for. That’s what everybody is looking for. And the reason I think my ability to communicate with people around the world has been so rewarded is because I actually understand that.

Could you have done something like be an ambassador? Nobody’s offered [that] to me in this administration. But I will tell you a funny story. When I was at the Kennedy Center Honors for Tina Turner [in 2005], I was sitting at Colin Powell’s table, and he said that we were in the ambassadors room [a room at the State Department with portraits of ambassadors and secretaries of state]. And I said, “Gee, this is really—this is lovely. An ambassador, I think that would be really great.” He goes, “Name your country, baby, name your country.” [ laughs]

So I can say reliably, “She turned down an ambassadorship!” I just laughed. He goes, “No, seriously, do you want to be an ambassador?” I go: “No, really, I was just—it’s just a thought. I was just saying it’s a nice room!”

Can I ask about President Obama? Are you concerned, disappointed? No. I think that no one understands until you’ve been in that seat the enormous pressure to please and satisfy everybody. And I think instead of being grateful for where we are and what he has done, we’ve forgotten that we were on the brink of a depression when he took over this office. And as everybody celebrates the holiday season and sits around with their families, regardless of your circumstance, we could’ve had breadlines. How soon we forget that.

And you would support him again? Absolutely.

Would you ever run for office? No.

Because? Because I know my lane and I can drive very well in it. I don’t want to get in that lane.

What she makes Stedman for dinner—and much more.

6:00 a.m. “Yesterday I got up at 6. I was going to get up at 5:30, but at 1 a.m. I sent an e-mail to security saying, ‘Give me an extra half hour.’ I got to the office about 6:30 and got on the treadmill downstairs in the gym. [While on the treadmill] I play Scrabble on my iPad, against the computer.”

7:30 a.m. “I got in the makeup chair, then did two shows.”

11:30 a.m. “I drank a green drink—spinach, parsley, a little bit of apple juice, celery, and cucumbers in a blender—and made some phone calls. I had to call Africa, and you have to do that before everybody goes to bed over there.”

12:35 p.m. “I got back in the makeup chair—I was running late—and then did a show with Barbra Streisand.”

2:00 p.m. “I came back upstairs, called the bank with any transfers that needed to be made, money issues. Then we had meetings about the next week’s shows, what we have coming up.”

7:50 p.m. “Yesterday was an early day, since I was on the treadmill [again] by 10 of 8. I’d already done 45 minutes in the morning, so I did 30 minutes. Actually, it took 34 minutes to finish my Scrabble game, and I stayed on to 35 to round it off. The guy next to me was at a level-50 incline, and I was at 10. I was embarrassed to stay at 10, so I moved to 20. I was like [ panting]—but I was going to keep it there.”

8:50 p.m. “This almost never happens, but I came home at the same time as Stedman [Graham, Oprah’s longtime love]. I made him something for dinner—leftover shrimp and rice, a little salad with lettuce, olive oil. I shaved some truffles, chopped up rosemary. I made it for him; I had a rice cake with almond butter. I’m trying not to eat past 7:30. I sat at the kitchen table and we talked for maybe 30 minutes, then I went to bed.

10:00 p.m. “I took my little stack of books to bed. I was trying to figure out what the next book club [selection] was going to be.” [She chose Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities.]