by Kitty Kelley
Hardly litigious, she had filed suit only once before, in 1992, when she and Stedman sued a Canadian tabloid that had published an interview purporting to be with Stedman’s male cousin under the headline “I Had Gay Affair with Oprah’s Fiancé.” She and Stedman won that suit by default when the publisher went out of business rather than defend the claim. She instigated one other lawsuit in 1995 by prompting her former decorator Bruce Gregga to sue the National Enquirer after the tabloid published color photos of her Chicago condominium, showing shiny gold-fringed chairs, satin damask couches strewn with velvet pillows, red silk wall coverings, and a marble bathtub with gold-plated faucets. “Her place was awful, so ornate and rococo, she should’ve sued the decorator for bad taste!” said one of the Enquirer’s attorneys from Williams and Connolly in Washington, D.C. Gregga was represented by Oprah’s attorneys from Winston and Strawn, and Shearman and Sterling.
“I remember seeing her minutes after she had seen the pictures,” said Bill Zwecker of the Chicago Sun-Times. “She had just flown back from Rancho La Puerta to attend Stedman’s book party on the top floor of Michael Jordan’s restaurant, and she was livid. ‘I am so furious,’ she said. ‘I just got off the plane and saw a picture of my bathroom in the National Enquirer.’ She fired Bruce, even though she knew he had nothing to do with publishing those pictures. He had a guy working for him who sold the photos for twenty-five thousand dollars to the tabs…but Oprah said they should have been locked in a safe….She felt totally violated.” In the end, Oprah and Gregga opted not to go to trial and settled with the tabloid.
She would say later that she never considered settling the “Dangerous Foods” lawsuit out of court, but her codefendant, Howard Lyman, claimed otherwise. “If they could have found a way to feed me to the cattlemen and gotten her out of the lawsuit, I would have been down in a heartbeat,” he said. “I have the highest regard in the world for Oprah, but I can’t say the same for her people at Harpo….After the trial was over they contacted my attorney and told him they wanted me to pay Oprah’s legal costs [approximately $5 million].” Lyman also said there was great fear resulting from the lawsuit. “The toughest thing for me was when my wife looked me in the eye and asked, ‘If we lose, do we lose everything we have?’ I had to tell her yes.”
Oprah, too, was afraid. She told the Amarillo Globe-News that before the trial she sent a security team to the city to make sure she would be safe from a lunatic’s bullet and her dogs would be safe from being poisoned. She later told Diane Sawyer, “I was afraid, physically afraid for myself. Before I went to Amarillo there were…‘Ban Oprah’ buttons…and bumper stickers.” She said she wasn’t afraid of all the people in Amarillo, just a random fanatic who might get excited by all the controversy. Beyond concerns of bodily harm, Oprah realized that if she lost the case, she would lose more than money: she would forfeit the credibility that was the cornerstone of her career. Consequently, she spared no expense in defending herself.
A close reading of the depositions taken in the lawsuit indicates quite a bit of rancor and staff dissension within Harpo, underscoring what one of Oprah’s former publicists described as “a snake pit.” Employees testified to workplace problems of drugs, sexual addiction, and anger management. An anonymous letter sent to plaintiffs’ attorneys on Harpo stationery was introduced as an exhibit at the deposition of a former employee. The letter directed the plaintiffs’ counsel to look into the drinking problems of one of Oprah’s senior producers, and race and sex discrimination throughout Harpo. The letter was signed “A Big Beef Fan.”
In deposing one of Oprah’s former senior producers, her attorney Charles (“Chip”) Babcock discredited the producer by exposing his past police record, plus an outstanding arrest warrant, which may have been the reason why all future employees of Harpo began with a thirty-day probation period while they were investigated by Kroll Associates, the international detective agency, before being hired full-time.
Oprah gave her first deposition on June 14, 1997, and two days later she wrote that she was still “reeling” from what she felt was an indignity. “Crew cut. Southern, young snuff-spittin’ lawyer, asking me if I’d just use my ‘common sense.’ Humiliating. They loved it….First time I ever felt pinned down, my back against the wall. Looking into the eyes of those lawyers, I felt like when those mossy-toothed boys had Sethe [from Beloved] pinned down in the barn….I can’t shake the demeaning, gut-wrenching deposition.”
Q: What reasonable scientific basis do you have for saying that cows should not eat other cows?
A: No scientific basis. Common sense. I’ve never seen a cow eat meat.
Q: That’s the entire basis for the statement?
A: My common sense?
Q: Yes.
A: And knowledge that I’ve acquired over the years.
Q: What knowledge is that? That’s what I’m trying to get at….What’s the basis for the statement that they shouldn’t be eating other cows?
A: Because that’s the way God created them, to eat grass and hay.
The attorney then asked about her professional credentials.
A: I’m the CEO of Harpo.
Q: You are also the host of The Oprah Winfrey Show?
A: Uh-huh.
Q: Are you an entertainer or a journalist?
A: I’m a communicator.
Q: Could you identify for me the awards that you have won?
A: Well, the award that means the most to me is being named one of the ten most admired women in the world, number three behind Mother Teresa.
He pressed her on the number of viewers she had, suggesting she did sensational shows like “Dangerous Foods” to draw more viewers, get higher ratings, and further enhance her business opportunities. She disagreed.
Q: So you don’t care what your viewership is….
A: That’s not what I said.
Q: You do care?
A: I would like to have as many viewers as possible, but I don’t do shows just to get viewers. I do not. This isn’t Jerry Springer you’re talking to…okay?
Oprah said there had been some shows that she had taped but then decided not to air:
A: One was a serial killer, Mercer, Ohio, who had allegedly killed 80 different people and he spoke about how he did it. Another one was a show on kidnapping. Another one was a stalker.
Q: What was the show on kidnapping, what was wrong with that?
A: Well, I thought that the way the show was presented it would encourage or present the idea of kidnapping to somebody who didn’t have the idea. And since I’m a main target for kidnapping I thought it wouldn’t be a good idea.
Six months later, on December 19, 1997, she gave the second part of her deposition and became a little testy when the plaintiffs’ attorney suggested she did “sensationalist type of work.”
A: I object to the word sensational. I object to the word sensational. I don’t do sensational shows. Not from the beginning have I done sensational shows. My feeling is that life is sensational and if it exists in life and you can report it, tell about it, inform and make people more aware then so be it, but I object to the term sensational.
The day before the trial began (January 20, 1998), Oprah arrived in Amarillo on her Gulfstream jet accompanied by her two cocker spaniels, her trainer, her bodyguards, her hairdresser, her chef, and her makeup man. Prior to her arrival, the Amarillo Chamber of Commerce had issued a staff memo saying there would not be “any red carpet rollouts, key to the city [or] flowers” for her. Instead, she was welcomed to town (population 164,000) by bumper stickers that read, “The Only Mad Cow in America Is Oprah.” She headed for the Adaberry Inn, a ten-suite bed-and-breakfast that she had taken over for herself and her personal entourage, which came to be known as Camp Oprah. The rest of the Harpo staff and production crew moved into the five-star Ambassador Hotel. She also rented the Amarillo Little Theatre to tape her shows in the evening after she attended the trial during the day. Oprah told the reporters gathered from around the count
ry that she was in Amarillo to defend her “right to ask questions and hold a public debate on issues that impact the general public and my audience.” She later said the trial was the worst experience of her life.
The judge, Mary Lou Robinson, issued a gag order, prohibiting both sides from discussing the case. “Can you imagine how hard it was for me NOT to talk about the trial?” Oprah said. “Can you imagine a gag order on a talk-show host? It was horrible.” She came close, though, as she cleverly presented herself as pro-beef in Amarillo, where the feedlot/slaughterhouse is the single biggest employer. In her first taped show, she had steaks sizzling in the background as she said, “Of course, you’re in Amarillo so there’s beef, beef, and more beef.” Interviewing Patrick Swayze, she said, “You had beef, did you? That’s just fine by me.” He presented her with a cowboy hat and a pair of black Lucchese boots. Then he taught her the Texas two-step. She adopted a countrified Texas accent, and at some point in every show (she taped twenty-nine) she mentioned the nice people of Amarillo. Within days she had the town wrapped around her little finger. The line for tickets to watch tapings of her show began forming at 4:00 A.M. every day and new bumper stickers sprouted up reading, “Amarillo Loves Oprah.”
The female judge refused to allow women to wear pants in her courtroom, so Oprah wore a skirt every day. “I loved the fact no cameras were allowed in the courtroom,” she said. “Those artist renderings made me look skinny.” Even with her trainer and her chef in tow, she still battled her weight—at least for the first few days. Then she said she gave herself over to “Jesus and the comfort of pie.” She gained twenty-two pounds during the six-week trial. “My trainer, Bob Greene, was very upset with me. He said, ‘It’s like you gained it, and you’re very proud of it.’ I’d say, ‘Yes! I ate pie! I ate pie! And we had macaroni and cheese with seven different cheeses!’ ” Her codefendant, Howard Lyman, a cattle rancher turned vegetarian, was not allowed to mention weight or food to her. “Her attorneys told me I couldn’t talk to her about her diet during the trial….They felt she was under enough pressure.” As director of the Humane Society’s Eating with Conscience campaign, Lyman was covered by legal insurance, which also paid for half the fees of Phil McGraw.
After he was hired, McGraw flew to Chicago to meet with Oprah, but he was told by one of her assistants that she could give him only an hour of her time. “Excuse me,” he said, “it isn’t my ass getting sued. If that’s all the time she’s got, then I don’t want to be part of this.” Before he stomped out, Oprah agreed to give him as much time as he needed to help her drop her defensiveness. “She came across poorly,” he said later, “in a state of disbelief that she was being sued.” Midway into the trial he told her to “snap out of it” or she was going to lose. She had come to his door at 2:30 in the morning, sobbing hysterically and unable to cope with the frustration of being “unfairly” accused. “My advice to her was that ‘right or wrong, Oprah, this is happening. They are well financed, dead serious, and deeply committed.’…I was a wake-up call that said deal with the fairness later, but right now you are in a firefight, and you’d better get in the game and get focused….At that point she became a very different litigant.”
Tall, balding, and broad-shouldered, McGraw walked behind her going in and out of the courthouse every day and never said a word to the news media. He did not even nod hello. Tim Jones of the Chicago Tribune said, “I thought he was one of her bodyguards.”
“Phil met with us and all the lawyers after every day in court,” said Lyman, “and he was worth every nickel he charged. His fee was $250,000—I know because I had to pay half of it—but I do not believe we would have won the lawsuit without the advice we got from him….Phil said we could defend the case on the facts and march in all of our scientists to swear up and down that everything we said was true, and the other side would do the same thing. But the jury sitting there needed to know if they voted to take away our right of free speech, someone could come along and vote to take away theirs. That was what Phil came up with and that’s why we won.”
Midway through the third week of the trial, Oprah took the stand to testify. She ascended the steps of the courthouse clutching the hand of Maya Angelou, who whispered in her ear as she stood to walk to the witness stand. Stedman arrived a few days later to take over from Maya, who returned home and sent a group of preachers to church to pray around the clock for Oprah.
For three days Oprah was examined about her negligence in not double-checking Lyman’s claims and not doing something about her producer’s careless editing. At one point she lost her patience, sighed loudly, and tossed her hair over her shoulder. When asked about her huge viewership, she said, “My show has been built around people who are just regular people with a story to tell.” Then she added, “I have talked to everybody I have ever wanted to, except for the pope.” After repetitive questioning, she leaned in to the microphone and in a commanding voice said, “I provide a forum for people to express their opinions….This is the United States of America. We are allowed to do this in the United States of America….I come from a people who have struggled and died in order to have a voice in this country, and I refuse to be muzzled.” She said if the guests on her show believe what they say is true and sign a statement to that effect, then truth is established for her, and accountability rests largely with the guests. “This is not the evening news,” she said. “I’m a talk show where free expression is encouraged….This is the United States and we are allowed to do that in the United States.” When she was asked about her integrity, she said, “I am a black woman in America, having gotten here believing in a power greater than myself. I cannot be bought. I answer to the spirit of God that lives in us all.” She said her influence was not enough to drive Americans away from beef. “If I had that kind of power, I’d go on the air and heal people.”
Her attorney pleaded with the jury in his final argument. “You have an opportunity to silence one of the powerful voices of good in this country. She is here to validate our right to free speech.” Describing Oprah as “a shining light” for millions of Americans, he said, “Her show reflects the right of the people in this country to have free speech…and robust debate.”
After five and a half hours’ deliberation over two days, the all-white jury of eight women and four men cleared Oprah, her production company, and Howard Lyman of knowingly making false and disparaging statements about beef. “We didn’t like what we had to do,” said the jury forewoman, “but we had to decide for the First Amendment.” Hearing the verdict, Oprah lowered her head and wept. Moments later she appeared on the courthouse steps in sunglasses and flung her fists to the sky. “Free speech not only lives,” she yelled, “it rocks.”
Seventeen
OPRAH NEVER gave up her dream of becoming a marquee movie star, and by 1997 she felt she finally had the vehicle to put her name in lights. For nine years she had been trying to develop Beloved, Toni Morrison’s novel about the effects of slavery. But even with a finished script, her own financing, and Disney as the distributor, she had been rejected by ten directors, including Jodie Foster (Little Man Tate), who said the book was too difficult to be filmed; Jane Campion (The Piano), who said she did not know enough about the black experience, and Peter Weir (Witness, Dead Poets Society), who said he did not want Oprah to play the lead of Sethe, the mother who kills her daughter rather than send her into enslavement.
“[He] couldn’t quite see me in it,” Oprah sarcastically told the writer Jonathan Van Meter. Mocking Weir’s Australian accent, she said, “And would I please just trust him and if he felt that I could be in it he would certainly make every effort.”
Although she had appeared in only two feature films and three made-for-television movies, Oprah insisted she was born to play the role of Sethe. So she dismissed Peter Weir without further consideration. “You want me to give you my script and you decide if I can be in it? Okay. Bye-bye.”
In 1997 she found the Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme (Th
e Silence of the Lambs), who said he couldn’t wait to see her play Sethe. Demme was hired on the spot, and Oprah became the producer and star.
“This is my Schindler’s List,” she said, referencing Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece. She felt that she could do for descendants of slavery what Spielberg had done for Holocaust survivors—bring to the screen a story of heroism surrounded by heinous evil. This was to be her first feature film production, although she had been producing made-for-television films on ABC under the banner of “Oprah Winfrey Presents,” and most had won their time slots with high ratings, if not rave reviews.