Oprah Winfrey Says She Quit “60 Minutes” After She Was Told She Was Too Emotional When Saying Her Name 

May 1, 2019 / Posted by:

When I was little I used to stumble across the Sunday night snoozefest that is 60 Minutes and wonder to myself “Who the hell watches this mess?” (And yes I said it just like that because I started cursing years before I could even ride a bike. Don’t judge me). I will admit that the only part I did enjoy watching was the late Andy Rooney being a crotchety old pepaw mad at everything. But another person who isn’t here for those sixty minutes of boredom is the Queen of Media Oprah Winfrey, who revealed that she stepped away from the program when they asked her to bring her Oprah-ness down a thousand notches while recording her voice for the show’s introduction.

First of all, how rude! It’s Oprah Winfrey. I could see if they were asking Cardi B to tone it down because she’s always on 10. But Oprah’s delivery is so smooth and cool, I guess they wanted her to be the perfect shade of monotone like Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Well, Oprah put 60 Minutes on full blast in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter where she covered a multitude of topics. She spoke about the backlash she received after her interview with Wade Robson and James Safechuck following the skeevy Leaving Neverland documentary. And when asked if she had any regrets she kept her response 100% Oprah.

No, I don’t regret it. It wasn’t really regret, it was just … actually, I was having dinner with friends and they were saying, “We saw you were in that.” Like, “Why did you do that?” This is what happened. I saw it, and I was shaken by it. I wasn’t even shaken by the fact that it was Michael Jackson, I was shaken by the fact that [filmmaker] Dan Reed had done a really good job of showing the pattern, and for years, I had been trying to show people the pattern. I’d been trying to say it’s not about the moment, it’s about the seduction.

I’m not sure why they asked Oprah if she regrets doing anything because I would assume that question normally gets answered with a throaty rich lady cackle and a tousle of one’s hair before uttering the words, “Silly mortal. Be gone!” That’s probably the reaction she was thinking about in her head when the producers of 60 (slow ass) Minutes requested her to recite her own name with less emotion. When asked about her involvement with the long-running CBS program, Oprah conjured up her most classiest “I Don’t Know Her” impression by stating:

“It’s not that it didn’t sit very well. I did it. I think I did seven takes on just my name because it was “too emotional.” I go, “Is the too much emotion in the ‘Oprah’ part or the ‘Winfrey’ part?” I had a deja vu moment because I’ve actually lived through this once before when I covered a story as a young reporter [where] the family had lost their home and my boss told me that I reported it with too much emotion. I had too much emotion in the story. I thought, “OK, so you’re not supposed to be involved in the story, I get that. You’re a journalist.” But the same thing is true even with a read [at 60 Minutes]. They would say, “All right, you need to flatten out your voice, there’s too much emotion in your voice.” So I was working on pulling myself down and flattening out my personality — which, for me, is actually not such a good thing.”

 They should be glad that Oprah didn’t give them an open hand slap to the face for this kind of disrespect. How dare they ask her to lower her emotions. Have they never seen the “You Get A Car!” episode from her show back in the day? Anything slightly below that register is about as good as it’s going to get.

Pic: Wenn.com

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