Oprah

by Kitty Kelley

  Now with her star power greatly enhanced, Oprah persuaded ABC to give her a weekly series in prime time based on the film. Her only caveat was that the show could not air on Thursday nights. “I will not be put in a situation where I’m up against Cosby,” she said, referring to The Cosby Show, one of the most popular shows on television then. To appease critics who felt The Women of Brewster Place bashed black men, Oprah agreed to add some sympathetic male characters and simply call the series Brewster Place. The network threw its full support behind her and her new show. “We are delighted to have Oprah Winfrey join our prime-time schedule in this series,” said Robert Iger, the new president of ABC entertainment. “The success of the mini-series last season and the ongoing popularity of her daily program are testament to Oprah’s universal appeal.”

  Brewster Place began airing in May 1990, but drew such poor ratings that ABC canceled it after eleven episodes. The failed venture cost Oprah $10 million and left Harpo’s facilities largely unused and unprofitable. Having once again lost a shot at prime-time television, she retreated to her farm in Indiana. She later told Essence magazine that she had failed because the noise of her ambition had drowned out “the voice of God.”

  “I thought I could make [the series] all right because I wanted it to be all right….But I wasn’t ready for it. My mistake was that I didn’t listen to the voice. Me! The one who always preaches ‘Listen to the voice,’ ‘Be guided by the voice,’ ‘Take direction from the voice,’ by which I mean the voice of God within me….The voice was speaking loud and clear and I didn’t take heed.”

  Oprah could not comprehend that the failure of Brewster Place might have been in its conception, or the script, or maybe even the acting. She had said over and over again, “God is with me. That’s why I always succeed….I am God-centered.”

  She did not believe that bad things could happen to good people. Nor did she accept the anarchy of fate or wicked chaos, even bad luck. She totally dismissed good luck as having any part in her success. “Luck is a matter of preparation,” she said. “I am highly attuned to my divine self.” She believed that everything was dictated by holy design, including the 157 miracles she told viewers she had experienced. She told Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel that his surviving the Holocaust was a miracle, but he disagreed. “If a miracle of God to spare me, why? There were people much better than me….No, it was an accident,” he said. Oprah looked at him incredulously.

  Having credited her “triumphal” life to God’s plan for her success, she now accepted her Brewster Place setback as another message from on high. “I truly understand that there is a lesson in everything that happens to us,” she said. “So I tried not to spend my time asking, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ but trying to figure out why I had chosen [to do the series]. That’s the answer you need. It’s always a question of accepting responsibility for your choices. Anytime you look outside yourself for answers, you’re looking in the wrong place.”

  In analyzing Oprah’s beliefs for The New York Times Magazine, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison had written that her “knotty contradictions” and simplistic truths often collided with each other but were perfect for sound-bite television: “They make up in pith what they lack in profundity.” The writer later admitted she could not bear to watch Oprah’s show. “You’ll forgive me, but it’s white trailer trash. It debases language, it debases emotion. It provides everyone with glib psychological formulas. [These people] go around talking like a fortune cookie. And I think she is in very large part responsible for that.” The writer Gretchen Reynolds agreed, if not quite so harshly. “[S]he is a true adherent…of the squishiest sort of self-help dogma. She believes you can ‘get to know yourself by facing your fears.’ ”

  Yet Oprah’s little homilies touched her audiences and reflected their own spiritual quest. As she evolved from a child of Old Testament preachers into a New Age theorist who loosely defined God as a vague force of the universe, she gave her viewers what she called “a spiritual reawakening,” so that they could all, in her words, “live your best life.” That phrase became such an Oprah mantra that she had the four words trademarked by Harpo, Inc., as her own. She led Live Your Best Life seminars across the country, charging as much as $185 per person, and attracted thousands of women. She passed out Live Your Best Life journals and encouraged everyone to write their aspirations in order to realize them. She distributed Live Your Best Life gift bags filled with scented candles and tea bags. She preached like an old-fashioned Baptist minister, but her Live Your Best Life sermons did not contain fire and brimstone. Instead, she offered huggy, feel-good messages about “living in the present moment” and “following your dream” and “listening to the voice,” which, she promised, would lead you to “live your best life.” And to the hordes of paying participants who wrote down every word she said in their Live Your Best Life notebooks, there was no better proof of this than Oprah herself.

  Thirteen

  DURING THE summer of 1988, Oprah heard a voice that led to the biggest change in her life and gave her the highest ratings of her career. It was the voice of Stedman Graham, whom Oprah said had been sent to her by God after she had formally prayed on her knees.

  Over dinner one night she asked if her size ever bothered him. He paused—a little too long. Then he said: “It has been something of an adjustment.” Oprah looked at him in disbelief.

  “At first I figured, ‘Oh, great. I get to be somebody’s personal growth experience.’ But then I started to realize that, my God, he’s been feeling that all this time [two years] and it took him this long to ever tell me about it.”

  On July 7, 1988, shortly after that conversation, Oprah started a protein-sparing fast, drinking a medical concoction of powder and water five times a day, plus sixty-four ounces of noncaloric liquids, and taking vitamin pills, but eating absolutely no solid food. Six weeks into the strenuous diet, she and Stedman were on vacation in Hawaii and Oprah started eating. “I felt terrible because I’d been so controlled up to that point. So Stedman said, ‘Why don’t you just decide you’re going to eat on vacation and not make yourself crazy? When you go home, you can start the diet again.’

  “ ‘How about if I had just one cheeseburger and got it out of my system?’

  “ ‘Are you crazy?’ ”

  Oprah became maniacal about that one cheeseburger. She waited for Stedman to go to his golf lesson and opened all the windows in the hotel room. Then she called room service and ordered the cheeseburger—with bacon and avocado. Minutes later she raced to the phone and called Gayle King to tell her what she had done. Gayle understood the binge because her husband, William Bumpus, had been on the same fasting diet and lost seventy-five pounds in twelve weeks. Oprah went back on her fast and jogged every day with Stedman. By the time she returned to Chicago in the fall she had dropped forty pounds.

  The transformation of her five-six frame was startling. Her audiences could not believe their eyes. She promised she would reveal her secret as soon as she lost more weight. Viewers tuned in every day just to see what she looked like. By October she had dropped another fifteen pounds. Still, she would not say how she was shrinking every week. Finally she announced that she would share her secret during November sweeps, on a show titled “Diet Dreams Come True.”

  The buildup to this show seemed to galvanize the country. Everyone wanted to know how Oprah, who once said she didn’t keep a handgun because she would shoot off her thighs, had finally managed to lose weight without joining the NRA. The Associated Press dispatched a photographer to Chicago, and newspaper editors around the country sent reporters to cover the “Diet Dreams” show. While acknowledging that Oprah’s amazing weight loss had grabbed the nation’s attention, the Knight Ridder correspondent groused that it was only “the most important social development since Michael Jackson’s last nose job.” Embarrassed to be covering Oprah’s diet revelation, he added, “Did she find the cure for cancer? Did she eliminate the specter of AIDS? Did she reduce the
national deficit?”

  The day of the much-ballyhooed show, November 15, 1988, Oprah sashayed onto her soundstage in a big bright red coat. “This is a very, very personal show,” she said. Then, like an exuberant stripper, she ripped off the red coat to reveal half of her former self. “As of this morning I have lost sixty-seven pounds,” she said, justifiably proud of her new figure, which was tucked into a pair of size-ten Calvin Klein jeans that had been hanging in her closet since 1981. She twirled around the stage to show off her new body in a cinched belt with a silver buckle, a tight black turtleneck, and spike-heeled boots. The audience cheered her wildly, waving the little yellow pom-poms they had been given for just that purpose.

  Oprah held up a package of Optifast powder, which she said she mixed with water in an Optifast cup and drank five times a day. This gave her four hundred calories of nutrition without solid food on a fast that supposedly spared the body’s loss of protein. Before she had ended her first segment, Optifast operators were bombarded. A company spokesman reported one million attempts to get through to the toll-free number after Oprah mentioned the brand name seven times. “I’m sure a lot of people think I own stock in Optifast,” she said. “I don’t.”

  After a commercial break, she returned pulling a little red wagon loaded with sixty-seven pounds of greasy white animal fat. Bending down, she tried to lift the bag of blubber. “Is this gross or what? It’s amazing to me I can’t lift it, but I used to carry it around every day.”

  Then she became very serious. “This has been the most difficult thing I’ve done in my life….It is my greatest accomplishment.” She then made her personal diary public, reading entries she had made after talking with an Optifast counselor about why she wanted to lose weight. “What is the bigger issue here? Self-esteem. For me, it is getting control of my life. I realize this fat is just a blocker. It is like having mud on my wings. It keeps me from flying. It is a barrier to better things. It has been a way of staying comfortable with other people. My fat puts them at ease. Makes them feel less threatened. Makes me insecure. So I dream of walking into a room one day where this fat is not the issue. And that will happen this year because the bigger issue for me is making myself the best that I can be.”

  The next segment of the show featured a congratulatory call from Stedman in High Point, North Carolina, to say how proud he was of her. At that time he was working for his mentor, Bob Brown, and seeing Oprah only on weekends. “I hate it,” she told reporters then. “It’s going to last another year. Then he says he’s going to move back to Chicago.” Her regular viewers knew who Stedman was, although they had yet to see him. She was saving that introduction for a February sweeps show titled “How Fame Affects a Relationship.” Stedman’s phone call of congratulations was followed by a video clip from Shirley MacLaine, whom the audience knew to be Oprah’s movie-star guide to all things paranormal.

  The “fat wagon” show became the most watched show of Oprah’s career, with her highest overnight rating ever in sixteen of Nielsen’s major markets, meaning that 44 percent of the daytime television audience watched. “These are unbelievable numbers,” said Stephen W. Palley, COO of King World. “Those people who didn’t see the show certainly heard about it.” Oprah’s eye-popping weight loss riveted the nation’s media for days after the show, as nutritionists and doctors and commentators debated the merits of protein-sparing fasts, with everyone wagering on how long Oprah would keep the weight off.

  Lost in the hullabaloo of headlines from coast to coast was the ill-timed salute of Ms. magazine (November 1988) to Oprah as one of six women to receive its 1988 Woman of the Year Award:

  “In a society where fat is taboo, she made it in a medium that worships thin and celebrates a bland, white-bread prettiness of body and personality….But Winfrey made fat sexy, elegant—damned near gorgeous—with her drop dead wardrobe, easy body language, and cheerful sensuality.”

  Oprah wanted no part of the tribute to her weight. “I never was happy when I was fat,” she said. “And I’ll never be fat again. Never.” She became irritated with people who asked if she would maintain her new size. “Asking me if I’ll keep the weight off is like asking, ‘Will you ever be in a relationship again where you allow yourself to be emotionally battered?’ ” she said. “I’ve been there—and I don’t intend to go back.” She said her romance with Stedman would keep her highly motivated. “I feel so much sexier….We’re just sexy, sexy, sexy now. My weight loss has just absolutely changed our relationship.”

  In a stand-up routine, Rosie O’Donnell said she was sick of hearing about Stedman. “Now that Oprah’s thin, she talks about Stedman all the time. Every five minutes it’s Stedman this and Stedman that. If she mentions Stedman one more time, I’m gonna fly to Chicago and force-feed her Twinkies through an IV tube.”

  Oprah vowed never to blimp up again because she was afraid of the grocery store press. “I have fear of tabloids because of the stories they would print.” But the pressure became intense, and the press began piling on. For the next year she was subjected to a national Amber Alert on her food intake, not simply from the tabloids but from the mainstream media, which also hounded her. Within weeks of unveiling her new starvation size, she was caught in a gluttonous feast by the syndicated gossip columnist Liz Smith, who wrote in the New York Daily News:

  Is our darling Oprah Winfrey becoming “The Phantom of the Oprah” we used to know—that is, just a shell of her former self?…Well, not to worry…Last Saturday she dined at Le Cirque in New York, consuming not only fettuccini with wild mushrooms, but a braised snapper. Then, on Sunday, she was with a party of six at New York’s Sign of the Dove and ordered poached eggs on a brioche with Hollandaise sauce. After that, Oprah decided the lunches of her companions were inadequate and ordered a chicken for the table, consuming almost half of it herself. Then Oprah moved on to Serendipity for a 20-ounce frozen hot chocolate with whipped cream.

  The next week, People reported Oprah was eating goat-cheese pizza at Spago in Hollywood. Then Vanity Fair weighed in: “Oprah Winfrey seems to be fleshing out a pair of larger than size 8 jeans,” adding, “Forget the Optifast—we prefer the grand old Oprah.” In its “Conventional Wisdom Watch” column, Newsweek said, “Oprah Winfrey—built terrific studio but working overtime at the dinner table again.” The unkindest cut came in August 1989, when TV Guide decided that Oprah’s body was not good enough to illustrate its cover story on her: “Oprah! The Richest Woman on TV? How She Amassed Her $250 Million Fortune.” So the magazine put her face on Ann-Margret’s dazzling figure, sitting atop a pile of money. The editor said it was not TV Guide’s policy to misrepresent, but he couldn’t see why anyone should complain. “After all, Oprah looks great, Bob Mackie got his gown on the front of the nation’s largest-circulation magazine, and Ann-Margret made the cover—most of her, anyway.”

  Oprah did not need the media to keep a death watch on her diet. She knew she was in trouble just days after she dragged her little red wagon across the stage. In her journal she wrote:

  November 29, 1988: I’ve been eating out of control. I’ve got to bring it to an end. I can’t get used to being thin.

  December 13, 1988: I came home and ate as much cereal as I could hold. I eat junk all day.

  December 26, 1988: There’s a party in Aspen, I don’t want to go. I’ve gained five more pounds.

  January 7, 1989: I’m out of control. Start out my day trying to fast. By noon I was frustrated and hungry just thinking about the agony of it all. I ate three bowls of raisin bran. Left the house and bought some caramel and cheese corn, came back at 3:00 staring at food in the cabinets. And now I want some fries with lots of salt. I’m out of control.

  For a few weeks after her “Diet Dreams” show, she savored the delicious sensation of buying beautiful clothes in designer boutiques, no longer having to shop at The Forgotten Woman or buy the two largest sizes of a dress at Marshall Field and have them sewn together to fit her. She indulged in shopping from the couture c
ollections of Christian Dior, Chanel, and Yves Saint Laurent. She posed for Richard Avedon in a black silk bodysuit for a national ad as one of Revlon’s most unforgettable women. “I loved doing the Revlon shoot,” she said. “It changed the way I felt about me. I never imagined myself as beautiful. But that ad made me feel beautiful. So for that reason alone it was worth shooting just to feel that.” She felt so good about her new thin self that she gave away all her fat clothes, donating them to the homeless. “It didn’t solve their problem,” she said, “but they’re sure lookin’ good.” She felt that after four months of starvation she had finally conquered her weight problem. So she stopped the Optifast group counseling and discontinued the supervised maintenance program.

  Within a year she gained back seventeen of the sixty-seven pounds she had lost. “It’s a battle I’m still fighting every waking minute of my life,” she told her audience, most of whom nodded in sympathetic agreement. At that point, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, 27 percent of American women and 24 percent of American men were considered to be overweight, bordering on obese. Oprah showed a video of herself chugging up a mountain at a high-priced spa, struggling to burn off calories. She looked defeated as she pleaded with viewers to please leave her alone if they saw her shoveling down mashed potatoes. “I’ve decided I’m not going to go through life depriving myself of things that make me feel good.”

  A year later she wrote one of her saddest journal entries:

  I cried in my office with Debra [DiMaio]….I cried for my poor miserable self having gotten to this state. Scale said 203 this morning. Controlled—just controlled by it…By the end of the day…feeling diminished, less of a person, guilty, ugly…I really am fat again.