I CAN FEEL NEW ZEALAND'S ENERGY
Thescreen queen’sKiwi inspiration
Oprah Winfrey is nothing if not enthusiastic. As the screen icon swishes into our interview room, she has the verve of a woman half her age.
Really, the 64-year-old Oscar winner and former talk-show queen could be forgiven for feeling a little jaded. She’s been promoting her new Disney movie AWrinklein
Time for weeks on end, which could make even the most dedicated Hollywood A-lister a little crabby.
But not Oprah. She wildly gesticulates, hops off her chair, grimaces and grins as she raves about her love for New Zealand.
“The energy is incredible,” she enthuses of Wanaka, where she, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling shot the movie. “If you don’t feel it when you’re there, you’re not alive.”
However, Oprah initially wanted to visit as a tourist, not dreaming she’d be one of the stars in director Ava DuVernay’s film about a teenage girl who travels across dimensions to rescue her scientist father with the help of three celestial beings.
She explains, “I’m friends with Ava and when she told me she was planning on shooting this movie in New Zealand, I said, ‘I’d love to tag along and watch – New Zealand is the most gorgeous country.’ And she says, ‘If you’re going to do that, would you like to read this part and see what you think?’ It all happened from there. I got a job and a free vacation!”
Of course, as a person who exemplifies empathy and caring, there was more to it than just a chance to hang out here in Aotearoa. It was also, as Oprah herself says, “the chance to touch hearts and cast a light on the world, because just a small amount of light can overcome any darkness”.
Atimelychange
She’s talking about Wrinkle’s message of self-empowerment. Oprah explains, “The central character is a 13-year-old brown girl [played by 14-yearold Storm Reid]. I would have cherished that when I was a 14-year-old brown girl. There was no-one who looked like me doing anything like this. I was just looking for white girls with dark hair. I was happy with that!
“It’s inspiring for me to be involved in a project where so many young kids will see the reflection of themselves up on that screen and what impact that will have in the future.”
The age of 14 is significant to Oprah, who rose out of racially-divided Mississippi to become the world’s most beloved and influential TV star, and the first AfricanAmerican multi-billionaire.
Born to a single, teenage mother on welfare, by 14, Oprah had lived her entire life in poverty and suffered every type of abuse imaginable.
“It was rough,” she says. “But I do believe the lowest moments in your life, the deepest pits, every single moment of
emotional destitution is a building block and another step in your journey to being who you are meant to be.
“One of my favourite quotes from the movie is, ‘The wound is the place where the light enters you.’ We see our struggles so often as experiences that make us weaker, but it’s the opposite – they make us stronger.”
In Wrinkle, Oprah plays Mrs Which, a wise, giant goddess who helps guide the film’s lead on her perilous journey. Did she have her own mentor to help her through her early years?
“I had a couple – some accidental,” tells Oprah. “An editor when I was working in a newsroom in Baltimore every night used to yell, ‘Winfrey, where’s my copy?!’ I was petrified of him. I used to go to work every day shaking with fear, saying, ‘I know I’m going to be fired,’ because I wasn’t a great writer. I wasn’t fast enough.
“I didn’t get fired in the end, but I did get demoted to the talk show, which was seen as a big demotion in those days. That’s where it all began, so I thank him. He was inadvertently a guiding light.”
If you don’t feel it when you’re here, then you’re alive!’ not