Oprah Winfrey Says Being Body-Shamed By Joan Rivers Almost Led To Losing Her Role In ‘The Color Purple’
Oprah Winfrey appeared as a guest on The Tonight Show back in 1985 during Joan Rivers‘ tenure as a guest host.
With Oprah opening up more about diet culture recently, she reflected on that interview on The Jamie Kern Lima Show and revealed that Rivers told her she needed to lose 15 pounds.
“Joan Rivers turns to me and she says, ‘Tell me why are you so fat?’ ” Winfrey, 70, told Lima. “On national television and I don’t know what do with that.”
At the time, she “agreed with Joan Rivers,” who said that she’d have Winfrey return as a guest if she lost the weight.
When speaking with Lima, the media mogul recalled, “She says to me on national television, and I accept it. I accept that I should be shamed, because how dare me, be sitting up here on The Tonight Show.”
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To which Winfrey noted, “And of course, I didn’t lose the 15 pounds. I went and ate my way to another 10 pounds.” She shared how she went to a “fat farm,” which was a common term for a “health retreat” back then.
She also admittedly believed that her weight cost her the role as Sofia in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of The Color Purple. However, the filmmaker called her, saying, “‘I hear you’re at a fat farm.’”
He added, “‘You lose a pound. You could lose this part.’”
Warner Brothers/courtesy Everett Collection
Winfrey confessed that the phone call was a full-circle moment for her. “The instant I let it go was the greatest life lesson I have ever received, because I physically felt the release,” she explained. “That became my grounding teaching for the rest of my life and career. Do everything you can, work as hard as you can, and then let it go.”
These days, Oprah finds herself defending her usage of 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. I’m absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself.”
Watch her sit-down with Lima in its entirety below.
