Best Of The Oprah Winfrey Show

Oprah Winfrey is much more than a living legend or a media empress. She is a sorcerer: for social change, for greater education, for healthier living, and for encouraging people to boost their self-esteem. By sharing her own life struggles — childhood sexual abuse and weight problems, among them — she bonded with her audience in ways that made her peers envious. Although she’s as rich as King Midas, Oprah succeeds because she has the common touch. Her daily talk show, currently seen in 145 countries, premiered on Sept. 8, 1986, and ended on Wednesday, May 25, 2011, with a blowout show at Chicago’s United Center that includes celebrities such as Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith. Loyal viewers can still catch her on her very OWN network. We have enlisted the best of The Oprah Winfrey Show for you!

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 Oprah tackles AIDS scare, 1987

Oprah interviewed Mike Sisco, a gay man with AIDS who almost caused a riot when he dived into a West Virginia swimming pool. Dr. Woodrow Myers, a public health official from Indiana, tries to separate fact from fiction about the spread of HIV and AIDS for the audience. “I understand that fear, and it’s a fear that many communities across the United States have,” he says. “It’s very important that folks know the facts, and the facts are you get this disease in blood-to-blood contact, you get this disease through sexual contact, and a mother can give this disease to her child.”

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Diet Dreams Come true, 1988

Who, can forget that iconic episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show where the talk show host famously walked out on set in her size 10 Calvin Klein jeans, beaming with pride and ready to show the world her new body. It would turn out to be the most highly watched episode in the history of one of the most highly watched daytime talk shows of all time.

In November 1988, about half of the total U.S. daytime television audience tuned in to see Oprah flaunt her weight-loss success by pulling a Radio Flyer wagon filled with 67 pounds of animal fat. Who could forget, right?

Well, it sounds like Oprah would like to. It seems that no one in show business has been on more diets than Oprah Winfrey. Her struggle with her weight is one of the reasons her audience will always relate to her. The diet episode showed Winfrey wearing her old, size 10 jeans and wheeling out a red Radio Flyer wagon containing 67 pounds of fat—the amount of weight she had lost through Optifast, a fasting and supplement program.

Race on The Oprah Winfrey Show, 1992

While we speak of George Floyd in 2020,  back in 1992 it was Rodney King. Twenty-eight years ago, four Los Angeles policemen — three of them white — were acquitted of the savage beating of Rodney King, an African-American man. Caught on camera by a bystander, the graphic video of the attack was broadcast into homes across the nation and worldwide. Fury over the acquittal — stoked by years of racial and economic inequality in the city — spilled over into the streets, resulting in five days of rioting in Los Angeles. It ignited a national conversation about racial and economic disparity and police use of force that continues today.

So what did Oprah do? Oprah forgot all about weight loss and makeovers and booked a flight to LA when riots broke out. She held a town-hall-style meeting with residents to hear them out. Oprah: Where are they now? (below) features an exclusive interview with Rodey conducted just 2 weeks prior to his death. Oprah filmed a show with an audience of locals, who spoke openly and honestly about the riots and the racial tensions in the city.

Micheal Jackson,1993

On February 10, 1993, Oprah sat down with Michael Jackson for what would be the most-watched interview in television history. Michael, a fiercely private entertainer, had refused to give an interview for 14 years. The unprecedented live event, which took place before any allegations were made about sexual abuse, drew a worldwide audience of 90 million people. “It was the most exciting interview I had ever done,” Oprah says to New York post. The embattled Jackson made a rare appearance, during which he attempted to dispel many of the bizarre rumors surrounding him. In the process, he told Winfrey he suffered from the skin-pigment disorder known as vitiligo. The episode was watched by 62 million viewers!

Ophra’s Book Club, 1996

Oprah revolutionized publishing when she created her own book club. Oprah launched Oprah’s Book Club from The Oprah Winfrey Show on September 17, 1996.

Her first selection was The Deep End of the Ocean, a novel by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Since the debut, Oprah’s Book Club has become one of the driving forces in the fiction publishing world, probably the most powerful endorsement a book can get, in terms of increased sales, after the Pulitzer.

Although it’s an institution now, Oprah’s Book Club was assumed to be dead on arrival by many critics, who thought that her viewers couldn’t be adequately motivated to read fiction. They were certainly proven wrong. It was a hit.

Some of Oprah’s picks have gone on to sell over a million copies – an explosive number in publishing. Oprah appeared to have the golden finger. The power of her endorsements was so significant that the phenomenon was dubbed “The Oprah Effect.”

Oprah Can’t Dance, 1997

Every girl has a dream and Oprah is no different. Oprah on Oprah.com says ”There was always one small thing I had dreamed of: singing onstage with Tina Turner. I finally got a chance to do it when the show went on tour with Tina.”

 “When we’d practiced our dance moves backstage, Tina said, ‘You really don’t have any rhythm, do you?’ During the performance, I could hardly concentrate. In the last few moments, I remember saying to myself: ‘Okay, girl, this is about to be over — so you’d better enjoy it.’ ”

 

Best of Oprah Winfrey Show, 2004

This episode has to be our favorite. To kick off the fall 2004 season, Oprah gave her studio audience a present. A big present. The members of the audience were given ribbon-tied boxes and repeatedly told not to open them. Or to shake them. She said that only one of the boxes contained a key to the gift — a brand-new Pontiac G6. Then, the audience started opening the boxes. Everyone had a shiny silver key. Everyone. As her fans screamed and cried, Oprah walked from one end of the stage to the other, bellowing, “You get a car, you get a car…Everybody gets a car!” 

 

Tom Cruise Meltdown on Oprah Winfrey Show, 2005

By 2005, Oprah had transformed her daytime talk show from a variation on Phil Donahue’s talk theme into something new, something that took the voyeuristic thrills of seeing televised confessions and elevated them with the language of self-help seminars and the polish of Hollywood.

Fifteen years ago, actor Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah Winfrey’s couch like a trampoline when he appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

Cruise declared his love for then girlfriend (and future ex-wife) Katie Holmes and hopped up on the furniture before Oprah said, “He’s gone. He’s gone. The boy is gone.”

The daytime host was more right than she knew. Though Cruise’s name is still a big box-office draw, these days, he is better known for being an outspoken advocate for Scientology and for his public antics. The couch jump marked the first shift in Tom Cruise’s image away from the heartthrob he’d been. (Pop quiz: Which movie was Tom Cruise promoting when he appeared on “Oprah” in 2005? Answer: It was “War of the Worlds,” but no one remembers because he jumped on Oprah’s couch.) You can watch the full episode on her OWN Network.

Oprah Skewers James Frey, 2006

On January 26, 2006, during a live broadcast of her daytime TV talk show, Oprah Winfrey confronts author James Frey about fabrications in “A Million Little Pieces,” his memoir about addiction and recovery, which she chose as an Oprah’s Book Club selection in September 2005.

“A Million Little Pieces,” published in 2003, was James Frey’s first book. In it, he describes in graphic detail his harrowing experiences with addictions to drugs and alcohol and his time at a treatment center when he was in his early 20s. After Winfrey picked “A Million Little Pieces” for her popular on-air book club, which launched in 1996, the memoir climbed the best-sellers lists, following in the footsteps of many of the club’s previous selections. In October 2006, Frey appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” to promote his book, which the talk show host had previously said she “couldn’t put down,” calling it “a gut-wrenching memoir that is raw and it’s so real…”