Oprah Read Free

“discovery” for the role of Sofia in that film had brought her a Cinderella following, and would later reward her with Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress.
    “I was just like Lana Turner at the soda fountain, only a different color,” Oprah joked, telling the story of how Quincy Jones, in Chicago on business, had seen her on television one morning and called Steven Spielberg to say he had found the perfect person to play Sofia. “She is so fine,” said Jones. “Fat and feisty. Very feisty.”
    Oprah spent the summer of 1985 filming the movie, which she later recalled as the happiest time of her life. “
The Color Purple
was the first time I ever remember being in a family of people where I truly felt loved…when people genuinely see your soul and love your soul, when they love you for who you are and what you have to give.”
    By that time she felt she was on the cusp of the kind of success she had always dreamed of for herself. “I was destined for great things,” she said. “I’m Diana Ross, and Tina Turner, and Maya Angelou.” Brimming with confidence, she told Steven Spielberg he should put her name on theater marquees and her face on the film’s posters. “I am probably the most popular person in Chicago,” she said. When Spielberg demurred, saying it was not in her contract, she chided him for making a big mistake. “You wait. You’ll see. I’m going national. I’m going to be huge.”
    Spielberg did not change his mind, and Oprah did not forget. When she became as “huge” as she had predicted, he became a weed in her garden of grudges. She recounted their conversation thirteen years later in a 1998 interview with
Vogue:
“I’m gonna be on TV and people are gonna, like, know me. And Steven said, ‘Really?’ And I said, ‘You might want to put my name on the poster for the movie.’ He said, ‘No, can’t do that….’ And I say: ‘But I think I’m really gonna be kindafamous.’ Which is my favorite I-told-you-so, Steven, you should’ve put my name on that poster!”
    A week before the movie’s premiere Oprah decided to do a show on rape, incest, and sexual molestation. When management balked, she said she was going to be seen on the big screen in a few days in a film about the subject, so why not explore it first for her local audience. The station agreed, reluctantly at first, and then ran announcements asking for volunteers to talk about their sexual abuse on the air.
    This particular show became Oprah’s signature program—a victim who triumphs over adversity—and the start of the Oprah Winfrey phenomenon. No one realized it at the time, but that show would elevate her to national prominence and eventually make her a champion for victims of sexual abuse. During that program, she introduced a new kind of television that plunged her viewers into two decades of muddy lows and starry highs. In the process, she became the world’s first black female billionaire and a cultural icon of near-saintly status.
    “I am the instrument of God,” she said at various times along the way. “I am his messenger….My show is my ministry.”
    Oprah’s show on sexual abuse was promoted for days in advance to draw an audience interested in “Incest Victims.” Except for her small staff, no one knew what she intended to do, other than present a titillating subject, which she had been doing since she started on WLS. No one had any idea that she was about to blur the long-standing line in television between discussion and confession, between interviewing and self-revelation. Between objectivity and a fuzzy area of fantasy and factual manipulation.
    On Thursday, December 5, 1985, Oprah began her 9:00 A.M. show by introducing a young white woman she identified only as Laurie.
    “One out of three women in this country have been sexually abused or molested,” she told her audience before turning to her guest.
    “Your father started out fondling you. When did it lead to