Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [166]
Hers was to be the first prime-time series to feature an openly homosexual lead character, and for eight weeks the publicity leading up to the show saturated the media. Before her character came out on television, Ellen outed herself on the cover of Time under the headline “Yep. I’m Gay.” General Motors, Chrysler, and Johnson & Johnson, which had aired commercials on previous episodes of Ellen, would not buy ads for the coming-out episode, and Oprah later told DeGeneres that she received more hate mail for doing that show than for anything she had done to date. But she frequently made this claim about her more controversial shows.
“I got more heat than I’ve ever gotten,” Oprah said.
“And did you think you would get that?” Ellen asked.
“No, I really didn’t, but it was okay because I did it for you and I did it because I believe I should have done it … so it didn’t really bother me … but at the time it was really shocking to me why [anyone] would write hate mail for that.”
Two days before Ellen’s coming-out episode on April 30, 1997, Liz Smith ran a blind item in her gossip column:
They do say that one of the biggest and longest-running TV stars is seriously contemplating making the same move that put Ellen DeGeneres on the cover of every magazine in the country and in the nation’s newspapers.
The star’s sexual orientation has been hidden under a glare of publicity for years. But when—ok—if this announcement occurs, it will make the seismic tremors of Ellen’s “Yep, I’m gay” statement look like small potatoes. It will be the furor to end all furors. (This celeb is an icon and role model to millions.) Remember, you heard it here first, even if we don’t want to say the name. People should be allowed to “out” themselves.
The same day Oprah appeared on Ellen as the therapist, who said, “Good for you, you’re gay,” Ellen appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where Oprah told her, “A lot of people said me being on your show was me promoting lesbianism. I simply wanted to support you in being what you believe was the truth for yourself.”
“Everybody thinks I’m a freak,” Ellen said, looking beleaguered.
Oprah’s audience chastised her for guest-starring in the coming-out episode and then criticized Ellen for being a lesbian and making it public. Yet that night, when the “Ellen” character came out of the closet, she packed America’s living rooms with thirty-six million viewers, and Oprah’s show earlier that day, featuring Ellen and her then-girlfriend Anne Heche, also won high ratings. But Oprah’s cameo appearance, plus the blind item, burned up the Internet for weeks with rumors about her sexuality, the most outlandish being that she was going to come out in Newsweek the way Ellen came out in Time. Oprah finally issued an official statement denying that she was a lesbian, thereby making her sexual orientation a public issue for years to come. Before her public denial she had denied the lesbian rumors to her audience after taping a show with Rosie O’Donnell, and she again addressed the subject in a keynote speech to a convention of seven thousand broadcasting executives in Chicago. Her words appeared under coy headlines around the country:
“Oprah Denies Rampant Gay Rumor” (Variety)
“Rumblings Behind the Oprah Rumor” (New York Post)
“Oprah Says She’s Playing It Straight” (Intelligencer Journal)
The week before that speech, her ratings had slipped 9 percent. “Since my appearance on the ‘Ellen’ show, there have been rumors circulating that I’m gay,” Oprah said in her press release. “I’ve addressed this on my show, but the rumor mill still churns. Several weeks ago, syndicated columnist Liz Smith wrote that ‘one of the biggest and longest-running TV stars is contemplating coming out.…’ Apparently, people assume that it’s me. It’s not.
“As I’ve said, I appeared on the Ellen show because I wanted to support her in her desire to free herself—and I thought it was a really good