Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [104]
“The audience was interested in my subject—to a point—but when I lost them, I lost Oprah. She’d jump over to their side and belittle me if I made a dumb point. If I made a good point and the audience clapped, she’d jump back to my side. It was unnerving.”
Even after an hour on Oprah, his book did not become a bestseller. “It did well, but it didn’t make the list,” he said.
“You had to get your book up to Oprah’s breasts to become a bestseller,” said the writer Blair Sabol. “Our publicist’s rule was if she holds it in her lap, you’d make the list in two weeks. If she holds it at her waist, you’d be on in a week. If she clutches it to her bosom, you’re headed for number one. So, naturally, we all aimed for Oprah’s boobs.”
In the early days, guests were allowed to sit and talk to Oprah as she was being made up before the show. “I was mesmerized by her hair and makeup guys,” said Sabol. “They were nothing short of miracle workers, because Oprah without hair and makeup is a pretty scary sight. But once her prep people do their magic she becomes super glam.… They narrow her nose and thin her lips with three different liners. They shade her large round cheeks, contour her chin with some kind of glowing stuff, and apply double-decker eyelashes that cost five hundred dollars apiece … and her hair. Well, I can’t even begin to describe the wonders they perform with her hair.
“Those guys—Reggie and Roosevelt and Andre—have been with her from the beginning, and she takes them everywhere she goes. I would, too. In fact, I’d ditch Stedman and Gayle before I ever let those prep guys go.”
Perhaps because of Oprah’s need for daily makeovers, she was susceptible to guests who were attractive and natural. With her arresting good looks and witty repartee, Blair Sabol was easy to book. “She was not like Marianne Williamson, who always wanted to take over the show from Oprah,” said Behrman. “Blair was lively enough to keep it going and entertain Oprah.… I booked her for a show on ‘Being a Bitch,’ in which she appeared with Queen Latifah, and she was very funny. When I got Blair on with her book, The Body of America, in 1987, Richard Simmons got his panties in a knot because Blair had written that Simmons found ‘a way to reduce fitness to a Vegas stand-up comic routine.’ She put down the national obsession with diet and exercise, and was way ahead of the curve on that one.”
After several sit-downs with Oprah before, during, and after her shows, Blair Sabol came to see the difference between the on-camera persona and the off-air presence. “Oprah gives it all to the camera, so there’s very little left over. In person she’s shut down, aloof, a bit stand-offish. She likes to laugh, but she’s not really funny. I liked her because she was a girl’s girl. Seeing her on television, though, you think she’s warm and affectionate, but that’s the persona. There’s a sheet of ice between the person and the persona.” The author Paxton Quigley also found Oprah cold off-camera. “I went on her show with my pro-gun book, Not an Easy Target, but her producers said I couldn’t mention guns because Oprah is against guns. I was only allowed to talk about self-defense for women, so that’s what I did.… I was surprised that I did not like Oprah at all. She only came to life when the camera was on; otherwise, she ignored me. That kind of treatment makes you feel so diminished. You realize that she’s using you, but then that’s why you’re there—it’s a mutual using, but I think guests expect her to be like the warm and cozy Oprah they see on the air. She isn’t—at all.”
Oprah’s executive producer from her People Are Talking years in Baltimore explained the difference between Oprah on- and off-camera as an element of performance. “I’d say this about most on-air talent,” said Eileen Solomon, now a professor of broadcast journalism at Webster University in St. Louis. “They save their best stuff for the camera, and that’s how it was with Oprah. Off the air she was much quieter. Pleasant and perfectly collegial, but in no way effusive.”
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