Double act cashing in on the royal soap Oprah
Are we all watching The Oprah and Gayle Show? Pass me the popcorn, I don’t want to miss a minute. Not only are Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King close friends, they are two of the most powerful media figures in the U.S. Oprah is a billionaire business and entertainment mogul, while Gayle is an award-winning journalist and host of the CBS This Morning Show.
I have admired them both for years. Until now.
For the two women have assigned themselves strange new roles, far beyond their remit as supposedly objective journalists.
Without so much as a curtsey or even a fleeting grasp of British history, the pair have cloaked themselves as superhero cheerleaders, apologists, spokespeople, champions and chief supporters of and for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
How did we get here, to this treacly plateau of puff after every little Harry and Meghan huff? First with Oprah’s CBS TV special, in which the chat- show veteran allowed the Sussexes to unfurl their moany banner of ‘truth’ without correction or intervention, even when being pelted by inconsistencies and inaccuracies.
Now TV host Gayle has picked up the baton to propound the Sussexian view of events; a version which always puts H&M as the innocents at the mercy of cruel forces trying to deprive them of their titles, money and prestige.
THIS week, Gayle seems to have become their unofficial mouthpiece, revealing on her show that talks between Prince Harry and his father and brother had been ‘unproductive’. Also that Prince Harry had a deal with CBS to pull the interview should his grandfather Prince Philip die during the Sussex publicity campaign.
Can that possibly be true? Sorry, kids. Oprah and Gayle don’t have time to check that kind of detail. Let’s move on.
So unflinching is their devotion to Harry and Meghan, one has to wonder how deeply both women are involved in the lives of the Sussexes.
From early meetings at Kensington Palace to wedding and baby shower invitations, Oprah and Gayle have been at every unfolding chapter of the Megxit story.
Oprah even seemed to facilitate the Sussexes’ temporary move to her friend Tyler Perry’s house in Los Angeles. And the couple, plus baby Archie, stayed with her at one point — and now they are neighbours in Montecito. Cosy!
Perhaps Oprah — and Gayle — are so protective because it is they who are the geese who laid the royal golden eggs, and they’ll protect their investment at all costs, even if that cost is the truth.
For example, the doctored montage of newspaper headlines shown during the Oprah interview were meant to suggest the British Press (hurrah!) were racist and anti-Meghan. Yet many of these headlines were edited or taken out of context, while others were from non-British titles. Yet CBS (boo!) will not remove them, for reasons that are unclear. Or are they? This week, Miss King took the tiny opportunity to sneer at anti-Meghanist Piers Morgan. She claimed he was ‘sacked’ from his Good Morning Britain show after 57,000 complaints to Ofcom.
This followed Morgan saying he did not believe anything the Duchess of Sussex said, particularly not her assertions that in 2019 she thought about killing herself (and therefore her unborn baby, too).
Who can know of the sorrow that engulfs the troubled mind? Yet surely one can sympathise with the Duchess’s predicament while still understanding that it is important to note and report that Morgan, in fact, resigned from GMB — and more than 200,000 people have signed a petition begging him to stay.
YET all this was ignored by Miss King; dismissed as inconvenient truths which do not tally with the cherished Sussexcentric narrative.
Meanwhile, it does not take a huge stretch of the imagination to understand how Oprah and Meghan came to bond in such a powerful way.
Oprah is blessed with great personal warmth, but is also tough and controlling, with a notorious reputation for cutting off those who cross her or displease her. Sounds familiar?
She also believes it is important for people to tell their own story, which is ironic, given that she is know to have made her own employees sign draconian Non- Disclosure Agreements, preventing them from ever talking about working with her.
Were they silent — or silenced? Both, actually. And how.
Over the decades, Oprah became famous for the choreographed voyeurism of her talk shows. It was only later that she moved into celebrity interviews, and her 1993 sit down with Michael Jackson was a classic.
‘ I’ve had very little plastic surgery,’ he told her, and insisted he was a normal guy who loved his girlfriend, Brooke Shields. Oprah sympathised with his complaints about ‘cruel’ tabloid speculation — much of which later turned out to be true.
In the end, I find it really disappointing that Oprah and Gayle, these two trailblazing, amazing women seem so ready to trash a royal family and an entire nation on the say-so of two aggrieved and entitled people who happen to be their pals.
especially as I once met Oprah — and interviewed her myself. I remember her warmth, her commanding presence, her boyfriend, Stedman, hovering in the background like a butler.
Also her admission that she stockpiled her favourite shampoos, knickers and fluffy bath towels, presumably because she grew up in poverty and had nothing nice of her own.
But most of all I remember her belief that people found appearing on her chat shows very cathartic, because it was sometimes easier to say something in public than it was face to face.
‘And once you have said your piece to 20 million people, there is no going back,’ she added. Indeed. We don’t have anything or anyone in the UK quite like Oprah or Gayle. Oprah, in particular, is one of the most powerful cultural figures in America. Her influence and reach are phenomenal. She is an American icon, the pope of popular culture.
If you receive her blessing, then you have got it made. And right now Meghan and Harry are visibly reborn, as they luxuriate in the warmth of her benevolence and power. But for how long can this love-in continue? It won’t last for ever — and what then?