Oprah Winfrey is looking back at one of the most painful moments of her early TV fame – and how it shaped decades of public scrutiny over her weight.
The 71-year-old icon opened up on CBS Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley about a 1985 appearance on The Tonight Show, when guest host Joan Rivers blindsided her with a question that still sticks with her.
“I was stunned in that moment,” Winfrey recalled. “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?’”
Oprah said she managed to fire back a simple answer on live TV: “I ate a lot.”
But once the cameras were off, the confidence faded.
“I left there feeling humiliated and embarrassed,” she admitted, adding that she wasn’t even angry at Rivers. In her mind back then, “She was right.”
At the time, Winfrey was just starting her climb to superstardom. She had recently taken over as the new anchor of A.M. Chicago, which was quickly gaining buzz. Within a year, she would launch The Oprah Winfrey Show, which went on to become the highest-rated daytime talk show in American TV history.
But as her career exploded, so did the obsession with her body. For years, coverage of Winfrey focused less on her accomplishments and more on her fluctuating weight.
In 1988, she famously wheeled a wagon full of animal fat onto her talk show stage to represent the 67 pounds she had lost — weight she later regained.
By 1992, Oprah said she was dreading the idea of winning at the Daytime Emmy Awards because of how she felt about her body.
“I go to the Emmys praying not to win,” she told Pauley, remembering how terrified she was of walking up in front of everyone after gaining weight again.
Of course, she did win Outstanding Daytime Talk Show Host for The Oprah Winfrey Show that night. And after that, her battle with weight continued in the spotlight: she ran a marathon in 1994, partnered with Weight Watchers in 2008 and eventually bought a stake in the company, and even did a vegan cleanse in 2011.
Everything changed again in 2023, when Winfrey decided to start taking a GLP-1 weight-loss medication.
In an interview with People, she called the medication “redemption,” saying she finally understood that obesity wasn’t just about “will power” but about the “brain.”
She echoed that on CBS Sunday Morning, telling Pauley, “It’s not my fault, Jane! It’s not my fault,” referring to her lifelong struggle to keep the weight off.
Still, she admitted she wrestled with shame before agreeing to take the drug.
“I was so motivated by shame that I felt I could not take the drug,” she said. But now, after letting go of that guilt and embracing help, Winfrey says she’s reached a place she once only dreamed about — a weight and mindset that make her feel like she’s in “the best shape” of her life.
TRASH is what I think about, whenever someone says the name, Oprah. She is a disgrace to all women. but I will say that she has lost at least 2000 pounds