Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [90]
Hell-bent on becoming a presence in prime time herself, Oprah wanted to star in her own sitcom, like Bill Cosby. “I will produce it and sell it to the network,” she said, “and it will be a raging success.” Having proved her genius on television, she considered herself a natural for a comedy about what goes on behind the scenes of a television talk show based in Chicago. She sold the idea for Chicago Grapevine and spent weeks in 1987 flying back and forth to Los Angeles to work on the pilot, but in the end Brandon Stoddard, president of ABC Entertainment, was unimpressed. He pronounced the concept “misguided,” said the Oprah character was not depicted successfully as “outspoken and realistic,” and canceled the thirteen-week series. Oprah did not see the cancellation as a failure, or even a setback. It was simply another step in her mystical evolution.
After filling her days, she booked her nights and weekends with photo shoots, interviews, speeches, and public appearances. “Even doing the number one talk show isn’t enough—it’s like breathing to me—I need something else to do,” she said. She wanted Stedman to accompany her everywhere, as if to show him off and perhaps prove she could attract a delicious-looking man.
A year into their relationship they got walloped with the first of many tabloid “exclusives,” this one claiming that Stedman had called off their wedding. Oprah, who had never learned to ignore the grocery store press, flew into a smackdown and denounced the story on her show and to every reporter within range.
“It’s outrageous,” she told Bill Carter of The Baltimore Sun. “We were going to sue,” until the paper promised a retraction. “This story said I was jilted, and crying my heart out, thinking of taking a leave of absence from the show. I was shattered and bitter. And that wedding dress I was waiting to lose weight to get into. It was the worst thing I’ve ever [read]. I can’t remember feeling that bad. Because people believed it and because of the kind of image not only that I created, but that I also believe in: Women being responsible for themselves. And so being portrayed as falling apart because I’d been jilted by some man, that was just too much. It was even worse than the wedding dress stuff.”
Oprah told the reporter that she had called Jackie Onassis for consolation. “She had called me earlier about possibly doing a book,” Oprah said, “and she told me I can’t control [what] other people [write].”
The conversation with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was duly noted in Carter’s story. “There still seems to be a side of Oprah that wants you to know all the amazing people her fame has brought her in touch with,” he wrote. “She is one of the most impressive name-droppers in the U.S.A.:
The call to Jackie O. The show with Eddie (as in Murphy). The dinner in New York at a table next to Cal (as in Klein). The movie rights deal with Quincy (as in Jones).”
Yet Oprah hastened to assure the writer that despite all her newfound riches and fame and celebrity friends, she was just as plain and ordinary as the people who watched her show and loved her with such intensity. “I really do still think I’m just like everybody else,” she said. “I’m just me.”
WHEN OPRAH made the cover of People magazine on January 12, 1987, she reached the summit of cynosure status. It was her first of twelve People covers in twenty years, putting her in a league with Princess Diana (fifty-two covers), Julia Roberts (twenty-one covers), Michael Jackson (eighteen covers), and Elizabeth Taylor (fourteen covers). Being crowned by the celebrity chronicle made her an instant pop culture icon, and