Joan Rivers brutally body-shamed a young Oprah Winfrey on live TV: "You went to a beauty contest?"
Oprah Winfrey's interview with Joan Rivers was all things awkward. In 1985, when Winfrey made her first appearance on 'The Tonight Show,' she went to promote her show 'A.M. Chicago.' At the time, host Joan Rivers made some bizarre comments about her body weight. "You went to a beauty contest they told me," Rivers quipped, meanwhile, Winfrey replied, "Yeah that was 15 lbs ago or so." Soon after, Rivers asked Winfrey, "So what did you win?" to which Winfrey replied, "Well I won the Miss Fire Prevention Contest." Then, Rivers diverted the conversation towards Winfrey's weight gain by saying, "So how did you gain the weight?" to which Winfrey jokingly responded, "I ate a lot."
At that point, Rivers wasn't amused with Winfrey's answer and said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You said '50 lbs' you shouldn't let that happen to you. You're very pretty. You are a pretty girl and you are single, so you must lose the weight." In her defense, Winfrey shared, "I'm going to you know what we are now in Chicago and we're starting a diet with Oprah in conjunction with The Tribune so I have been put under pressure to finally do it."
Soon after, Rivers shed light on her weight and expressed, "I am trying to lose five pounds. Will you come back with me in March when I'm back you lose 15 and I'll lose five. That's the only way I'll do it. I'll keep thinking you are losing and I'm not. I'm furious. I'll do it if you do it. Right after, Winfrey interrupted Rivers and told her, "You will. It's a deal." The two sealed the deal with a handshake. Speaking of the weight loss challenge, Winfrey explained, "I'm excited about it because I've gone up and down and up and I've been on every diet." During the episode, Winfrey revealed that she has previously tried different diets including the banana weenie egg diet and the pickles and peanut butter diet.
Rivers chimed in, "I just eat cookies but I only eat 800 calories worth of cookies. See I figure you do it that way." On the other hand, Winfrey stated, "I saw Cartner in here last night who'd lost." Rivers cut Winfrey mid-sentence and exclaimed, "But you couldn't tell she's very chubby. She should lose more. Don't you think? Don't you think she should lose more?" A confused Winfrey replied, "Well I think, yeah." Then, Rivers went on to say, "Go, Oh, you are not people that help friends at diet. You must tell a friend the truth you must say, 'You are still a pig, lose more weight.' That's a friend." Winfrey agreed with Rivers' viewpoint.
While appearing in a 2024 episode of the podcast 'The Jamie Kern Lima Show', Winfrey shed light on her interview with Rivers. “Joan Rivers turns to me and she says ‘Tell me why are you so fat?’ On national television and I don’t know what to do with that. I just did, like, ’Oh, I just love potato chips, Joan.’ She says to me on national television And I accept it. I accept that I should be shamed, because how dare me, be sitting up here on The Tonight Show," Winfrey recalled, as per People magazine. In the same interview, Winfrey mentioned that she and Rivers “agreed that I was gonna go away and lose 15 pounds. And of course, I didn't lose 15 pounds. I went and ate my way to another 10 pounds.”
According to a report by USA Today, Winfrey even went to a health retreat to shed her weight. Due to her weight, Winfrey believed that she wouldn't get the role of Sofia in the 1985 movie 'The Color Purple.' However, one phone call from the director Stephen Spielberg changed everything for Winfrey. On the phone call, Spielberg told Winfrey, "I hear you're at a fat farm. You lose a pound. You could lose this part." Following that, Winfrey remarked, “The instant I let it go was the greatest life lesson I have ever received because I physically felt the release."