Oprah Winfrey made a strong bond with her audience throughout the years on her talk show.
She offered an emotional example of this at her Cannes Lions appearance.
It was the time when Whitney Houston appeared on Winfrey’s show.
The host candidly recalled asking the singer before filming what she planned to achieve from the interview.
“We did the whole ‘Hey girl, how you doing?’ greeting thing, and then I stopped the cameras and I went backstage and I said, ‘So tell me, what do you want to happen here?'”
“And I’m going to tell you what I want to happen here,” she said. “And that was one of the most powerful interviews.”
Then years later, Houston returned to The Oprah Winfrey Show. But at the time, the pop icon had reportedly fallen back into drug use.
“The Oprah Show’s audience … I think it was [Houston’s] last show with us, and she had gone back on drugs.”
Its effect was instant, as before the show, the singer fell off the stage.
“The day she came to my show and then to perform in front of the audience, she was not, and she fell off of the stage.”
Winfrey, swiftly at the moment, realised if this had gotten into the public, Houston’s reputation would have cratered.
“I knew that if that story got out … she would be destroyed by that,” the talk-show legend recalled.
Then, Winfrey pleaded with audience members with cameras not to share what happened on stage.
And they listened.
“And so even though the audience was there and the audience had cameras, I begged them not to put those pictures out because it would ruin her life, and they did not.”
“That would not happen today, I can tell you that,” Oprah concluded, pointing out a sharp contrast with today’s social media.
