Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [146]
The day before the The Oprah Winfrey Show was to go on summer hiatus in 1994, her senior producers presented her with their ultimatum: Either the “dictatorial” Debra DiMaio goes or we go. Having lost a dozen producers and associate producers over the last two years, Oprah could not afford any more staff upheaval. So she called in her executive producer, who was also vice president of Harpo, one of her oldest friends, and her closest professional colleague, and allowed her to resign. DiMaio signed a lifetime confidentiality agreement that she would never speak or write about her association with Oprah, and she walked out of Harpo with a check for $3.8 million. Oprah was now without the hard nose and soft shoulder of the woman who had functioned as her alter ego for the past ten years. Within the industry the unexplained departure of DiMaio, who had launched Oprah into national syndication and kept her at number one, resounded like thunder. Her successor, Dianne Hudson, pledged to keep the show “out of the talk-show gutter.” Oprah immediately closed the studio, dispatched her staff, and disappeared on vacation, where she was “not available” for media calls, all of which fell again to Colleen Raleigh, her publicist.
In losing DiMaio, Oprah had lost her executive producer, chief of staff, party planner, confidante, nanny, and buffer against Jeff Jacobs. As a consequence, she became even more dependent on her personal assistant, Beverly Coleman, who soon caved under the strain and resigned two months later, saying she was “totally burned out.” Oprah offered her $1 million to stay, but Beverly said she could no longer take the twenty-four-hour workdays.
Then, in September, Colleen Raleigh gave notice, and a few weeks later she sued Oprah for breach of contract, claiming she had been promised $200,000 in severance pay, $17,500 in back pay, and $6,000 in vacation pay. “As a public relations professional with a reputation as a reliable and honest source, she was no longer able, in good conscience, to foster the image of Oprah Winfrey, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and Harpo as happy and harmonious and humane,” said Raleigh’s lawyer. “She was continually placed in the position of trying to hide the truth about the disorganized management of Harpo” and about Oprah’s “tumultuous partnership” with her company’s chief operating officer, Jeffrey Jacobs. “Colleen devoted eight years of her life to Ms. Winfrey, but could no longer work in an environment of dishonesty and chaos.”
Infuriated at being publicly embarrassed, Oprah told reporters she would fight Raleigh’s suit to the bitter end. “There will be no settlement,” she said. Her lawyers tried to get the lawsuit dismissed, but managed only to require Raleigh’s lawyer to file amended complaints. This continued for months, until Oprah was hit with interrogatories requiring her to respond under oath to questions about her turbulent relationship with Jeffrey Jacobs and all the work she had made Colleen Raleigh do for Stedman Graham to promote him and his business with the Graham Williams Group and Athletes Against Drugs, and to help him promote his clients the American Double-Dutch League World Invitational Championship and the Volvo Tennis Tournament. After four more months of court pleadings, Oprah saw that it was in her best interest (and Stedman’s) to pay off