In 1985, Oprah Winfrey’s debut on The Tonight Show should have marked a high point in her career
Instead, it became a moment of deep insecurity when host Joan Rivers made insensitive comments about her weight.
Recounting the incident on The Jamie Kern Lima Show, the 70-year-old TV icon revealed how Rivers brazenly singled her out on national television.
“Joan Rivers turns to me, and she says, ‘Tell me, why are you so fat?’” award-winning TV show host recalled.
“I just said, ‘Oh, I just love potato chips, Joan,’” to which Rivers coldly responded, “Shame on you.”‘
At the time, Oprah agreed with Joan Rivers, who coldly suggested that she’d let the “A Wrinkle in Time” star return as a guest on one condition.
“I’ll let you come back if you lose 15 lbs. You need to lose 15 lbs.,” Oprah recalled Joan saying.
“And I accept it. I accept that I should be shamed, because how dare me, be sitting up here on ‘The Tonight Show,’” she added.
The media mogul remembered promising Rivers, who passed away in 2014, that she would shed the 15 pounds — though, as she candidly admitted, she “of course” didn’t follow through.
“Of course, I didn’t lose the 15 pounds. I went and ate my way to another 10 pounds.”
Oprah ended up going to a “fat farm,” which was a popular term for a “health retreat” back then, a choice that almost jeopardized her role in the 1985 film “The Color Purple.”
But in a strange turn of events, Director Steven Spielberg called the media proprietor and told her, “I hear you’re at a fat farm. You lose a pound, you could this part.”
That moment, Oprah told Jamie, was a full-circle moment for sure.
“The instant I let it go was the greatest life lesson I have ever received because I physically felt the release,” she shared.
Oprah went on to secure the role of Sofia in the movie adaptation of the book of the same title by Alice Walker, ultimately earning her an Oscar nomination.
“That became my ground teaching for the rest of my life and career. Do everything you can, work as hard as you can, and then let it go.”
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These days, Oprah finds herself defending her choice to use weight loss medication.
“I now use it as I feel I need it, as a tool to manage not yo-yoing,” she said.
“The fact that there’s a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier, in my lifetime, feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for,” she added.
“I’m absolutely done with the shaming from other people, particularly myself.”
