Key Points
Oprah Winfrey sat down with LinkedIn Editor in Chief Dan Roth for an interview and EW has an exclusive clip.
Winfrey reflected on her aha moment when it came to “ownership” of The Oprah Winfrey Show.
“I bet on myself,” she said.
Oprah Winfrey learned an important lesson about “ownership” during the early years of her career.
“There was this movie called The Color Purple — ever heard of it?” Winfrey quipped during Entertainment Weekly’s exclusive clip from the talk show host’s sit-down with LinkedIn Editor in Chief Dan Roth. Winfrey explained that getting the “opportunity to be in that movie” was “what I wanted more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.”
At the time, Winfrey’s bosses only gave her two weeks off to shoot the film. However, she needed two months vacation. Winfrey made, what she thought, was an acceptable bargain.
Oprah Winfrey and the Broadway cast of ‘The Color Purple’
Credit: Jemal Countess/WireImage
“I promised them them my entire contract’s vacation, if you would just let me go shoot this movie,” she recalled. “If you just let me do this, I’ll give up all my vacation for all the years of my contract to come. I’ll never ask for a vacation again.”
Winfrey hosted The Oprah Winfrey Show for 25 seasons from 1986 to 2011. When it was “time for syndication,” she got a major lesson from her lawyer.
“My lawyer said, ‘You never want to be in a position where you have to give up all of your vacation.’ You have to give up yourself for something that is meaningful to do,” she recalled. Winfrey’s lawyer then suggested she “take ownership” of her talk show.
Winfrey “bet on” herself in that moment and, first off, “not take a salary.” More importantly, she had to “believe that the show was gonna do well enough” so she could take care of herself.
“And that’s what I did,” Winfrey said in Tuesday’s clip. “I bet on myself.”
She added, “The reason I could bet on myself was I had been sitting with those audiences, I’d been talking to people every day.”
Even though Winfrey shot her eponymous talk show in Chicago, “the heart” of the viewers was universal. “What we’re saying and feeling and thinking about and what matters to us is, people in this moment, is all the same,” she added.
“Everybody cares about being able to be the best version of themselves that they can create for themselves and their families,” Winfrey continued. “The realization was, if this works here, in this small community of Chicago, then I believe that the rest of the world will also respond.”
Winfrey is currently recreating this forward thinking with her newly expanded The Oprah Podcast. Winfrey is tackling important topics while speaking with leaders, newsmakers, and cultural changemakers for each episode of her show.
The Oprah Podcast drops two episodes every week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The show is available on YouTube and all podcast platforms.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly