'Lose 15 Pounds' (Exclusive): Oprah Winfrey Recalls Being Body Shamed by Joan Rivers on The Tonight Show

The mogul shared why she chose to “accept” being told to lose weight on national television

Oprah Winfrey is looking back on her very first appearance on The Tonight Show — and how host Joan Rivers’ comments about her weight made her feel like, “I should be shamed.”

Winfrey — who believed she had just lost a role in The Color Purple due to her weight — shared on The Jamie Kern Lima podcast that she’d appeared on The Tonight Show in 1985 to discuss how her program, A.M. Chicago, was beating then-ratings juggernaut Phil Donahue.

Instead, the conversation turned to Winfrey’s size. 

“Joan Rivers turns to me and she says ‘Tell me why are you so fat?’ ” Winfrey, 70, told Lima, the author of the bestselling book Worthy and the founder of IT Cosmetics.

“On national television,” Winfrey stressed, adding, “and I don’t know what do with that.”

“I just did, like, ’Oh, I just love potato chips, Joan.’ ”

Winfrey continued, saying that Rivers, who died in 2014, told her “shame on you.”

At the time, Winfrey says, “I agreed with Joan Rivers,” who she says told her, ‘ “I’ll let you come back if you lose 15 lbs. You need to lose 15 lbs.’ “

“She says to me on national television,” Winfrey continued. “And I accept it. I accept that I should be shamed, because how dare me, be sitting up here on The Tonight Show.”

Winfrey said she and Rivers “agreed that I was gonna go away and lose 15 lbs. And of course, I didn't lose the 15 lbs.. I went and ate my way to another 10 lbs.”

Winfrey shared that she had gone away -

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to “this health retreat” — which she explained was “at the time, they called them fat farms” to lose weight.

While there, Winfrey says was working on accepting that her weight had cost her a role in The Color Purple. When she’d finally let go of the possibility of appearing in the film, she told Lima received a phone call that changed everything.

It was from The Color Purple’s producer, Steven Spielberg, who told Winfrey,” ‘"I hear you're at a fat farm.’ “ 

“ ‘You lose a pound,' " he told her, " 'You could lose this part.’ "

Winfrey says the phone call was a full-circle moment for her — because she’d finally “let go” of the part when she got the call.

“The instant I let it go was the greatest life lesson I have ever received, because I physically felt the release,” said Winfrey.

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“The second I did that it changed,” she said — and Winfrey did, of course, land the role of Sofia, which earned her an Academy Award nomination.

“That became my grounding teaching for the rest of my life and career,” she shared. “Do everything you can, work as hard as you can, and then let it go.”

New episodes of The Jamie Kern Lima podcast are available Tuesdays on YouTube.

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