She’s the most powerful woman on earth. A nod from Oprah Winfrey means instant success and millions of women live by her simple but powerful mantra – live your best life. As Queen Oprah brings 300 of her biggest fans to Sydney for the decade’s most anticipated live shows, Sharon Krum reveals the secrets behind her amazing rise.
In pictures: Oprah through the years
Oprah Winfrey knows the exact hour she decided to begin evolving into “Oprah” – the woman recently named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine. It’s a rare thing to see it and Oprah would probably call it a lesson, a gift.
“I was looking at a skinhead show [in 1988], and I said to my staff, ‘That’s the show that caused me to do television differently’,” she told TV Guide recently. “What I learned from that is you cannot allow yourself to be a vehicle that promotes the energy of hatred in any form. That was life-changing for me.”
And so Oprah, 56, began making over her show, just as she had made over her own life, filling it with stories and people who informed, motivated, taught, excited and challenged us to be our very best selves.
She became our friend and New-Age spirit guide, confidante to celebrities and champion of the voiceless and abused. She told devotees not just to listen to their souls, but how. It turned her into the most famous talk show host in history, but it’s what Oprah did with her success that the best fortune teller wouldn’t have seen in the cards.
She stepped out of our TV screens and became a mogul – a billionaire businesswoman who runs Harpo Studios, a philanthropist, school builder, TV, theatre, radio and film producer, star maker, creator of the world’s biggest book club, O magazine founder, actress, endorser of presidential candidates, and, this month, the person who can turn the Opera House into the “Oprah House”.
“She’s talented, ambitious, smart and has this entrepreneurial instinct that few have matched,” says Professor Robert Thompson of New York’s Syracuse University, an expert in television and popular culture. “But the key to Oprah is her unique biography and her ability to seem so intimate with us.
“Forget being born with a silver spoon in her mouth, Oprah wasn’t born with a spoon,” he says. (Oprah grew up in poverty in Mississippi). “She confesses to us about her childhood abuse, her problems with weight and she allows us to think we can reinvent ourselves, too.”
“The show hasn’t been a big part of my life. It’s been my life,” Oprah told TV Guide. “I didn’t have children. I had the show.” That show and its message made her a powerhouse, but as Oprah herself has said, “Unless you choose to do great things with it, it makes no difference how much you are rewarded, or how much power you have.”
Read more of this story in the December issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
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Related video: TODAY chats to the excited winners who have secure seats to the Australian Oprah shows.
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