Oprah Admits Surprise At How Far Harry And Meghan Went During Her Epic Interview
Oprah Winfrey has done thousands of interviews, but admits she was still surprised that Meghan Markle “went all the way there” during her March interview, wherein she accused members of the Royal Family of racism.
Winfrey was speaking on Nancy O’Dell’s new TalkShopLive streaming show about her March interview of the Sussexes, a chat which is still clouding the royal relationships and public attitudes toward Meghan and Harry.
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“I had no idea that it would have the reverberating impact that it has had and continues to have,” Winfrey told O’Dell. “Our shared intention was the truth. They wanted to be able to tell their story and tell it in such a way that allowed them to be as truthful as possible.”
Yet even the veteran interviewer was taken aback when Markle claimed that the Royal Family was concerned with the potential skin color on her son, Archie.
“What? You’re going there? You’re going all the way there,” Winfrey exclaimed to O’Dell. “The reason why it was such a powerful interview … was when you have somebody else who is willing to be as open, as vulnerable, as truthful as they were.”
Winfrey also detailed the secrecy surrounding the interview, making sure that the crew wouldn’t leak any word of the content before airtime to make sure the couple’s remarks couldn’t be “misconstrued.”
The interview also included Winfrey’s reaction to the Derek Chauvin trial. While Winfrey admitted she wasn’t glued to her television and relied on “summaries” of the trial until the verdict. “And, as I was watching, having literally having turned the television on for the first time through the week because I had really just been doing summaries, I was surprised that hearing the first guilty verdict, I could feel myself welling up, and then I saw photographs of people in the streets.”
“This feels like it’s more than just for a verdict, it feels like validation,” she added. “It feels like this time we were seen, we were heard in a way that we hadn’t been. I thought about Emmett Till, I thought about all the names that we have seen, protesters in the street talking about Breonna Taylor, and Mr. Castille. I thought about all of those people who didn’t get justice in the way they deserved and how those lives seem somehow, in this moment, justice was served for all of them by this verdict. It was bigger than this moment.”
The interview with O’Dell came as Winfrey is making the rounds in support of her new book, What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing.
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