How Oprah makes new friends
WHEN a new podcast launches, it’s usually rough around the edges as producers figure things out. Of course, Gwyneth Paltrow’s first Goop podcast – the latest extension of her ever-expanding empire – was destined to be a more put-together affair. Not only does she have the NPR voice and good sound-quality down, but she landed the biggest fish imaginable as her first guest: Oprah Winfrey.
Over the course of an hour, the women commiserated about haters, hashed out the #MeToo moment and discussed Winfrey’s big Golden Globes speech. Here are 11 of the biggest takeaways from the interview:
speech was not a subtle nod to Oprah 2020.
Despite what a lot of hopeful Oprah fans thought they heard during Winfrey’s speech at the Golden Globes, when she accepted the lifetime achievement Cecil B DeMille Award, she was not laying the groundwork for a presidential bid.
“I wasn’t trying to run for any office,” Winfrey insisted. Her speech may have been rousing, but all she wanted to say in response to the #MeToo movement was, “I’m proud of where we are and what we’re doing, but you need to know you didn’t get here alone. There are those who endured, suffered, didn’t speak, because they couldn’t speak – because they knew that to speak would mean I wouldn’t be able to feed my children – who have come before you who made this path possible.”
both fully aware of their haters.
Winfrey joked that when Paltrow was in the tabloids, she would be relieved because it took the heat off her. Over the years, Winfrey said she’s come under fire for segments on spirituality, for self-care stories about the importance of putting oneself first and from people who claimed she was trying to start her own religion as the “church of Oprah”.
Winfrey’s mentor, the late Maya Angelou, helped her weather the criticism, telling her that ultimately the negativity wasn’t about Winfrey so much as tabloid writers in need of a story to sell. AWrinkleinTime
her longtime partner Stedman Graham aren’t seen together in public very often
“Every time there’s a new photograph there’s a new story,” Winfrey said. It’s easy for tabloid writers to fabricate narratives based on a passing expression. The couple did show up together at the Golden Globes, which may not have led to a lot of new tabloid fodder, but his Resting Confused Face certainly prompted some entertaining memes.
you.
Winfrey talked about two of the books that most affected her life, and they’re both about spirituality and human consciousness. The first is The Seat of the Soul by frequent Oprah guest Gary Zukav, and the sec- ond is Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. Both forced Winfrey to be more present and think about her intentions. They also helped cure her of “the disease to please”, she said, so that she no longer feels like she has to say yes to everything.
being on Gwyneth’s podcast?
Paltrow was apparently very persistent. But the new venture also reminded Winfrey of starting her own television show and how hard it was to lock down that first guest.
“We were like bribing Don Johnson,” Winfrey recalled. “We were doing everything. It’s so hard to get that first.”
but her most important piece is one of her earliest acquisitions (and it’s far from the priciest).
According to the media mogul, one of the first things a visitor to her home sees when they walk in her door is a 1904 painting by Harry Roseland of a slave on an auction block with her daughter.
Winfrey has also collected documents from plantations with information about the slaves who were forced to live there. She said that when she feels like things aren’t going her way, she sometimes revisits those documents and speaks the names of the slaves out loud. It reminds her “how far I have come, and no crisis seems that much of a crisis after you’ve looked at the names, the ages, the prices of people who were before you, who made this way possible”.
school student activists “new Freedom Riders”.
“They’re going to take the energy and power of that pain and turn it into something miraculous,” she said.
the
movement will extend beyond sexual harassment.
She foresees this being a moment when all kinds of abusive behaviour can be called out for what it is and eradicated.
“Not only am I not going to take your sexual harassment, I’m not going to take any of your b—, period, you know?” she said. “I think we’re on our way there.”
subject, she’s going to inevitably ask some questions.
She turned the tables on her interviewer midway through the podcast, asking Paltrow if she was triggered by all the stories about Harvey Weinstein. Paltrow said she was, especially since she was terrified to come forward with her own stories about the man who paved the way for Paltrow’s best-actress Oscar for Shakespeare in Love.
“I didn’t feel safe to do it, but I felt I had a responsibility to do it,” she said.
The discussions about Weinstein have brought up a lot of feelings Paltrow hadn’t yet processed, she said, including abuse from her own childhood. She also now thinks that one of the reasons she quit acting was subconsciously to get way from Weinstein’s bullying.
just like the rest of us.
After actor David Oyelowo gave Winfrey a DVD of Ava DuVernay’s 2012 drama Middle of Nowhere, the media mogul became interested in the woman behind the movie.
“I googled her,” Winfrey said. “I saw this lovely woman with dreads in glasses – pretty, warm, brown face, and I thought, I’m going to be her friend.”
And how does Winfrey go about making new friends? She hosted a Mother’s Day luncheon at her home and invited a bunch of people and their mums, all as an excuse to spend some time with DuVernay. Since then Winfrey has starred in the director’s acclaimed Selma and now A Wrinkle in Time, which premiered Friday.
“I wasn’t just going to call her up and say, ‘I’m going to be your friend’,” Winfrey said.
Though, really, who would say no if she did?