Oprah Winfrey recalls Joan Rivers body-shaming her on TV: ‘Why are you so fat?’

Oprah Winfrey is shedding gentle on her first visual appearance on “The Tonight Present,” and how then-host Joan Rivers commented about her body weight.

When getting a guest star on “The Jamie Kern Lime Show” podcast, Winfrey, 70, informed Lime that she appeared on “The Tonight Show” in 1985 to discuss her effective Television set show, “A.M. Chicago,” but in its place the dialogue shifted toward her human body dimensions.

“Joan Rivers turned to me and she says ‘Tell me, why are you so extra fat?’” the former broadcast journalist instructed Lime, the founder of IT Cosmetics.

Winfrey replied: “Oh, I just love potato chips Joan.”

Rivers, who died in 2014 owing to brain problems from deficiency of oxygen, informed the former Television host “shame on you.”

She included to Winfrey: “I’ll let you appear back if you reduce 15 lbs. You need to have to lose 15 lbs.’”

Winfrey emphasised that this was “On countrywide television. And I never know what to do with that.”

In the course of the interview with Lime, Winfrey said she had agreed with Rivers.

“And I take it. I settle for that I should be shamed, due to the fact how dare me, be sitting up right here on ‘The Tonight Exhibit,’” she went on.

Winfrey explained that she and the late “Fashion Police” host “agreed that I was gonna go absent and shed 15 lbs. And of training course, I did not shed the 15 lbs. I went and ate my way to a further 10 lbs.”

The “Color Purple” star would afterwards go on a “health retreat” to get rid of weight, which were being referred to as “fat farms” at the time.

Winfrey originally considered she missing her purpose in “The Shade Purple” thanks to her fat. Following allowing go of the desire of acting in the motion picture, she bought a lifestyle-changing cellular phone get in touch with.

Director Steven Spielberg heard that she was at a “fat farm” and informed her: “You eliminate a pound, you could drop this portion.”

Winfrey instructed Lime that her simply call with Spielberg was a entire-circle minute.

“The quick I permit go was the greatest existence lesson I have at any time received because I bodily felt the release,” she stated. “The next I did that it altered.”

Winfrey landed the position of Sophia in the 1985 drama, a movie adaptation of the very same-title book, written by Alice Walker. The role earned Winfrey an Oscar nomination.

“That became my grounding teaching for the rest of my lifestyle and vocation,” she shared. “Do almost everything you can, do the job as difficult as you can, and then allow it go.”

More than the decades, Winfrey has utilized other bodyweight loss strategies, together with Body weight Watchers.

“The Butler” star served on the board given that 2015, when she obtained a 10% stake in the enterprise, and grew to become an ambassador in 2017.

Earlier this yr, she resigned to prevent a conflict of fascination forward of her specific, “An Oprah Unique: Shame, Blame and the Excess weight Loss Revolution.”

“I resolved [to leave the WeightWatchers board] since this exclusive was seriously crucial to me, and I wanted to be capable to communicate about whatsoever I want to speak about,” she stated on “Jimmy Kimmel Reside!” in March. “And WeightWatchers is now in the organization of remaining a weight-wellbeing business that also administers drug prescription drugs for pounds. I did not want to have the appearance of any conflict of desire.”

When she resigned she donated all of her shares to the Nationwide Museum of African American History. 

Winfrey’s Television particular aired that very same thirty day period amid experiences she was using bodyweight decline medication.

Though she never specified which drug she used, the Tv set character admitted to working with it after knee surgical procedure in 2021.

“The simple fact that there is a medically authorized prescription for taking care of body weight and staying more healthy, in my lifetime, feels like aid, like redemption, like a gift,” she advised Persons in December 2023.

“After knee medical procedures, I commenced climbing and setting new distance targets just about every 7 days. I could sooner or later hike a few to 5 miles each individual working day and a 10-mile straight-up hike on weekends,” she extra. “I felt more robust, extra in shape and far more alive than I’d felt in many years.”