JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Every week, a guest draws a card from NPR's Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. Oprah Winfrey has been looking back on her life recently. She has a new book out. It's called "Enough: Your Health, Your Weight, And What It's Like To Be Free." It is cowritten with Dr. Ania Jastreboff, and much of it focuses on Oprah's embrace of GLP-1 drugs for losing weight. But Oprah also reflects on her very long and very public battle with obesity. She tells Wild Card host Rachel Martin that it was part of the national conversation from the beginning.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
RACHEL MARTIN: People were mean.
OPRAH WINFREY: People were mean.
MARTIN: You did this interview. It was your first interview on "The Tonight Show." Joan Rivers sat in as the guest host. And she said on national TV that you needed to lose 15 pounds, and you needed to do it now, and you couldn't come back to the show till you did.
WINFREY: Yeah, she did.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE TONIGHT SHOW")
JOAN RIVERS: So how'd you gain the weight?
WINFREY: I ate a lot.
(LAUGHTER)
RIVERS: No, no, no. No, no, no, you said 50 pounds. You shouldn't let that happen to you. You're very pretty.
WINFREY: I don't - you know what?
RIVERS: No, I don't want to hear.
WINFREY: Let me tell you this.
(LAUGHTER)
RIVERS: No.
WINFREY: Let me tell you something.
RIVERS: You're a pretty girl, and you're single.
WINFREY: Yeah.
RIVERS: You must lose the weight.
MARTIN: That is wild.
WINFREY: But what is wilder? I wasn't even upset with her about it. I wasn't even upset with her about it.
MARTIN: Because you agreed?
WINFREY: I felt such shame about it that I thought, well, she has told me - I thought she was doing me a favor. Like, she's going to let me come back if I lose the 15 pounds.
MARTIN: Oh, God.
WINFREY: I didn't think, how dare you speak to me that way? I thought, wow, OK, so it finally caught up with me. It was shame that I already felt for myself.
MARTIN: Yeah.
WINFREY: So it didn't make me feel any kind of way toward her.
MARTIN: She was just affirming what you already believed about yourself.
WINFREY: Affirming what I already knew.
MARTIN: Yeah.
WINFREY: I thought I looked pretty good that night, though, 'cause I'd bought...
MARTIN: (Laughter).
WINFREY: ...My Stuart Weitzman shoes.
MARTIN: The shoes.
WINFREY: And I got the dress made, and I had my hair done, and it's "Tonight Show." And then she - and then I thought, oh, God, it still didn't cover up...
MARTIN: Yeah.
WINFREY: ...The fact that I'm fat.
SUMMERS: In her conversation on Wild Card, Oprah talked about how she managed to stay grounded in spite of all the public attention.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
MARTIN: How do you tap into something bigger than yourself?
WINFREY: Oh. Well, everything's bigger than myself. My whole life is based on tapping into what is bigger than me. Sidney Poitier and I used to get into all these - if you were to ask me what regret I had, my biggest - one of my biggest regrets, which isn't a big thing, but every Sunday, I used to talk to Sidney. And Sidney Poitier was one of those people who, when I was a little girl - I was 10 years old, and he won the Academy Award. And I remember thinking in that moment - we called ourselves colored people then - that's a colored man. A colored man did that. If he did that, I wonder what I could do.
And I grew up to meet that man. And he was one of the few people on the planet who really, really, really got me. So on my 42nd birthday, Quincy Jones had a birthday party for me, and I walked down the stairs - and he knew how much I admired Sidney Poitier. And I walked down the stairs, and there is Sidney Poitier.
MARTIN: You hadn't met him before?
WINFREY: I hadn't met him before. And he said, my dear, I have been longing to meet you. And he comes on my show, and we had a conversation on my show. And then afterwards, I went into the control room, and I bawled into a towel, like, oh, my God. I can't believe it was Sidney Poitier. I can't believe it. I was such an idiot. I don't even know what I said. I was so out of my body. I don't da-da-da (ph).
MARTIN: (Laughter).
WINFREY: And then, two days later, he called me and he said, my dear, I didn't feel like I was completely myself. I would love to have another conversation with you, just the two of us. And would you like to join me? And I - for dinner, and I went and I met him for dinner and then, you know, after that, every Sunday.
MARTIN: Wow.
WINFREY: For years, we spoke every Sunday. And my regret is I didn't record the conversations and that I didn't even write it down.
MARTIN: Yeah.
WINFREY: And, I mean, I think I could have done a whole book now on Sundays with Sidney because he just imparted so much wisdom and care. And I think of him because he and I used to get into these ongoing arguments about - he would say the forces of life, and I would say, why don't you just call it God? Why don't you just call it God? He goes, I'm not comfortable saying God, but if you're comfortable saying God, I can accept that. So he called it the forces of life. Now I'm comfortable with whatever name you want to use it. And so I would want to say to Sidney, I regret that I didn't record it in some way.
MARTIN: But he - it was interesting that that was the story that cued up in your brain when asked about, how do you tap into something bigger?
WINFREY: Yeah.
MARTIN: He helped you. I'm sure there are many, many people who are that for you...
WINFREY: Yes.
MARTIN: ...Who help you get to that place, but...
WINFREY: Well, it was not only just Sidney, but, you know, when I first started, I was so overwhelmed, and I see this with young people. I remember interviewing Justin Bieber when he turned 18, and I said to him, I really feel for you 'cause it's really...
MARTIN: Yeah.
WINFREY: ...Hard when you get discovered on YouTube at 12, and you think this is the life. You think that, you know, people telling you how wonderful you are, that that's the life. And where are you going to find the space to figure out yourself, who you are in all of this? So one of the great things for me is that it happened - the whole attention thing came when I was already 30 years old.
MARTIN: Yeah.
WINFREY: But I was still like, how do you do this? And what should you do about that? And I had Quincy. I had Sidney Poitier, and I had Maya Angelou.
MARTIN: That's pretty good.
WINFREY: Pretty good.
MARTIN: That's pretty good.
WINFREY: Yeah.
SUMMERS: "Enough" is out now. That was part of an hourlong conversation with Oprah. You can watch it by following @nprwildcard on YouTube. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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