The Oprah Effect: In Conversation With Oprah Winfrey
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Updated: Oct 04, 2013, 18:21 IST
Noel De Souza
Regarded as one of the most influential personalities in the world, Oprah Gail Winfrey is a media proprietor, talk show host, actress and producer. Over the years, her stratospheric success and subsequent fortune have enabled her philanthropic initiatives. Even though much has been written about her life, at the release of her new film, The Butler, Winfrey sits down for an intimate chat.
During his tenure as the butler in the White House, Cecil Gaines served eight presidents gaining a unique view of the changes that swept America, from the war in Vietnam to the civil rights movement, which changed society and his own life. His life is the subject of the new film, The Butler starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey as husband and wife.
Excerpts from the interview
It's been 15 years since you acted in a film…
The reason that I put my acting life on hold is because of my daily job and the work and time it required to put into The Oprah Winfrey Show. I was never able to find a producer-and rightfully so-who could fit my schedule. And I had commitments.
Even when this film was offered to me, it could not have been at a worse time, as I was going through all the headaches of creating a network [OWN], being flamed in the press, and trying to put a team together to make it work. It's just the way my life has worked out- when I choose something I have to choose in such a way that it's going to fill me up and not drain me. I only want to choose work that I think is going to be meaningful, and have an impact on culture, because I have a limited amount of time to do it and so that is why you have seen me in so few things, and the things that you have seen me in are pointedly meaningful for the African-American experience.
What was it like for you to start acting again?
I was anxious and scared. I was afraid, but not afraid in terms of fearful, but [because] I wasn't sure that I still had it-that thing that would allow me to go before a national audience. So, the director, who encouraged me to get back into acting, told me to call Susan Batson, who is a well known coach to a lot of people, [including] Nicole Kidman. She came to see me and I told her that I had a big problem crying, and there was going to be a lot of crying [in the film] and I wasn't sure I could execute it because I didn't know if I had the technical skill to do that on cue. So she sat with me for 20 minutes, and I was bawling on the sofa. Then I said to her, I am going to need a confidentiality agreement for everything I just told you. She said, 'I am so surprised, Oprah. You are still so vulnerable and so open and that's a good thing because you can go inside that space and find the character'.
If someone asked you why they should see this film, what would you tell them?
All my work, my whole life is about opening the heart space for people. That's what I did for 25 years of The Oprah Winfrey Show. My real role on this planet, I think, is to be that voice that helps connect people to stories, so that they can see their own lives through the stories. So, when I read the script I felt connected, and that has been my key over the years. The reason I want people to see this is [for] the space inside ourselves that allows us to see African-American people as real people-as a family with tenderness, love, connection, faith, nurturing and support. I want people to see that and understand history.
What do you consider when you are interviewing someone?
What I did during all those years of interviewing and still do as an interviewer is to try to remove myself and really surrender to wherever that person is. Before I start an interview, I ask the person off-camera, 'Tell me what your intention is, because I am the person who can fulfil it and I don't want you to walk away from the interview wondering what you should have said, [or saying] you didn't ask me this'. So, if I really know what you want, I can best help you get it. I do that for all important interviews and then I sort of step back and try to meet them where they are. I normally don't go in with an agenda. I go in simply trying to find wherever that person is most willing to be, to [find] the thread of truth for themselves.
How could you relate to the butler, and what do you have in common with the story?
I'm sure that you know my mother was a maid and her mother was a maid, and when I was growing up, my grandmother's biggest hope for me was that I would be a maid in a house with white people who treated me well. She always said to me, 'I hope you grow up and get some good white folks' because that's all she could imagine for herself. My grandmother's mother was a slave. So, I feel that I have sort of stood on the shoulders of domestic workers. My father is a barber, so for him to be able to have his own shop and business was a major thing, and it was a step up into middle class from poverty. I wouldn't be here, today, talking to you and be so blessed with the life that I have if not for the domestic workers in my family. So, I positively can relate to the story.
What did you dream of when you where young?
I was blessed to have been born in 1954, the year [of the] Brown vs. Board of Education case in America because I didn't have to live a life of repressing who I really am. I could never be a stay-at-home housewife, it never even occurred to me. I always thought that I was going to somehow be able to speak to the world.
What motivated you?
I would say faith. Growing up, the first thing I learned to read were Bible stories, and because of reading those stories, I was able to understand that there was a world that was bigger than my backyard and the red clay of Mississippi and something inside of me believed that I would be able to see it one day. I have to say that it's a spiritual connection to something bigger than me-it's intuition.
You visited India last year. What was that experience like for you and what did you learn?
The opportunity to go to India was part of fulfilling a bigger idea that I had about wanting to see the world. I would have to say that it was a mind, soul and heart-opening experience. I experienced everything from the very first day that I arrived. I kept imagining how this world would be seen through the eyes of our viewers, the common thread in the human experience is our shared humanity. And that we are really all searching for the same thing though we call it by different names. We call God by different names. We call our family traditions by different names. We eat different foods, live in different spaces, but ultimately we are all looking for the same thing-a little peace here on earth.
Do you remember any one interview that touched you deeply?
On my show a few years ago there was a man-I can't remember his name-who was on the plane that crashed in Korea. It crashed because in a heavy rainstorm, the plane landed on the wrong runway. Most of the people on that plane died. He was in first class, trying to escape and as he tried to get himself out of the front door he turned and looked back into the middle, into the fuselage and everyone was strapped in their seats and the whole middle section was on fire and he saw lights coming out of people's heads. He described them as auras coming out of the flames, out of the bodies, and he said, 'I am not a religious person. I don't know what that was, but I made a decision that if I got out of that plane I wanted to live (he described some of the auras as being brighter than the others) so that when I left [the world] I would have a bright aura'.
Then, I interviewed a woman, a beautiful woman who was struck by a drunk driver-the car blew up and burned her entire face. It's like the moment when you go to shake someone's hand and a thumb is missing, so you pull your hand back. She had no face and was really hard to look at and I asked her, 'Why didn't you kill yourself? You must have thought of killing yourself?' And she said, 'I have too much to do'. I thought to myself, at that moment, that I paid lip service to the idea that beauty is within, it's really easy for us to say that beauty is within and it's not the outside that matters. This woman literally does not have a face, she looked monstrous, but as I sat there with her, I thought that this is the real definition of beauty, for her to look into a mirror and see what she has to look like and live for, that is what true beauty is. I have many more stories, but these are the ones that moved me.
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