PRIMETIME PUTDOWN

Oprah Recalls Humiliating Joan Rivers Interview: ‘I Was Stunned’

The host recalled a moment when she was asked how she gained weight.

Oprah Winfrey has faced scrutiny over her weight since the beginning of her career, and she has now opened up about how some of those comments made her feel.

“I was stunned in that moment,” Winfrey, 71, told host Jane Pauley on CBS Sunday Morning, discussing a 1985 interview in which she was asked by guest host Joan Rivers on The Tonight Show how she gained weight.

“I’m sitting there, and we’re toward the end of the interview, and Joan turns to me and says, ‘So, tell me, you know, how’d you gain the weight?’” Winfrey recalled the interview, adding that her response at the time was simple: “I ate a lot.”

The billionaire media mogul said she left the interview “feeling humiliated and embarrassed,” but not angry or upset, as she felt that Rivers was “right” about her comment.

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At the time, Winfrey was at the beginning of her rise to national prominence, having recently become the new anchor of A.M. Chicago, which was gaining national attention. The following year, she began hosting The Oprah Winfrey Show, which would become the highest-rated daytime talk show in American television history.

For many years of her career, media coverage frequently focused on her fluctuating weight.

In 1988, Winfrey dragged a wagon of animal fat onto her talk show stage after losing 67 pounds, which she later regained.

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“I go to the Emmys praying not to win,” Winfrey told Pauley, recalling attending the Emmy Awards in 1992 after her weight gain and fearing of walking in front of everyone.

She went on to win Outstanding Daytime Talk Show Host for The Oprah Winfrey Show and later resumed her weight-loss journey—running a marathon in 1994, partnering with Weight Watchers in 2008, in which she later acquired a stake, and completing a vegan cleanse in 2011—before eventually beginning GLP-1 medication in 2023.

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In an interview with People, Winfrey called the weight-loss medication “redemption,” noting that she finally realized that obesity wasn’t about “will power” but about the “brain.”

She repeated this to Pauley, telling the host, “It’s not my fault, Jane! It’s not my fault,” that she had trouble keeping her weight down, while also emphasizing that the decision to take weight-loss medication was not an easy one.

“I was so motivated by shame that I felt I could not take the drug,” Winfrey said, adding that now, on the medication, she has reached a weight that makes her feel like she is in “the best shape” of her life.

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