During her long television reign, Oprah has had her share of embarrassing, shocking and exciting moments. Global News takes a look at some of the most memorable highlights.
Tom Cruise on the couch
Tom Cruise seemed to be on top of the world – until he climbed on top of Oprah’s couch during a May 2005 interview. The hysterical couch-jumping incident by Cruise as he tried to display his affection for his then-girlfriend and now-wife Katie Holmes became a running joke from which he will likely never recover.
"I’m in love! I’m in love! I can’t be cool. I can’t be laid-back," he said, as he jumped around the sofa and fell to his knees.
Fat wagon
Oprah’s weight has been a hot topic of discussion over the years, but it was the host herself who got it all started on a 1988 episode of her show.
Oprah, wearing a pair of size 10 jeans, rolled a wagon of animal fat on to the set to represent her 67-pound weight loss. The host said she had dropped the weight in five months with a liquid diet and exercise.
The episode set new ratings records for the show, which would be the beginning of Oprah’s famous weight struggle. With the return of solid foods to her diet, the weight returned as well, and Oprah was ten pounds heavier within a few weeks.
She later said the episode was her “biggest, fattest” mistake. By 1992, the host had reached her heaviest weight ever.
“You get a car! You get a car! Everybody gets a car!”
One of Oprah’s most famous segments, called “free things,” sees audience members leave the studio with thousands of dollars worth of free swag.
But on her 19th season premiere in 2004, the host outdid herself by giving away a free car to all 276 people in attendance.
Oprah told the audience that one of the boxes placed under the chairs would contain a key, and the recipient would be the winner of a new Pontiac G6 sedan worth $30,000. The crowd exploded as each person opened their box and discovered a key.
General Motors paid $7 million for the giveaway, but what the audience at home didn’t see was that each member of the audience still had to pay $7,000 in taxes in order to take their gift home.
Michael Jackson interview
Oprah has had many high-profile interviews over the years, but her most memorable subject may have been Michael Jackson.
The TV legend sat down with the music legend at his Neverland Ranch on Feb 10, 1993, for a one-hour primetime special. It was Jackson’s first interview in 14 years, and is still one of the most-watched interviews in history with 90 million viewers worldwide.
The interview got off to a light start, as Jackson gave Oprah a tour of his property and displayed the moonwalk. But things took a more serious tone as Oprah prodded the troubled star with questions about romance, plastic surgery, his skin pigment and his relationships with children.
The King of Pop drew the line when Oprah asked him if he was a virgin, and he awkwardly refused to answer.
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Mad cow lawsuit
Oprah’s influence was so great by 1996 that an episode of her show discussing mad cow disease caused sales of meat to nosedive for weeks.
A group of Texas cattlemen sued her for $10 million for maligning the meat industry when she said she had been put off eating burgers.
She filmed several episodes of her show from Amarillo, Texas, during one month of the trial. But the case dragged on for four years before Oprah finally emerged as the winner in 2002.
Obama inauguration
One of the most significant presidential elections in history had its own Oprah moment as cameras caught the television host weeping in the crowd during Barack Obama’s Nov 4 victory speech in downtown Chicago.
It was the culmination of a campaign that Oprah had enthusiastically supported since her official endorsement in May 2007.
Her seal of approval sparked a flood of support – one study calculated the “Oprah effect” was worth one million votes in the Democratic primary of 2008.
Mackenzie Philips interview
Oprah’s audience was stunned in September when Mackenzie Philips revealed on an episode of the show that her father, Mamas and the Papas music legend John Philips, had raped her as a teenager.
Philips said she then had a 10-year sexual relationship with her father that only ended when she became pregnant with his child and had an abortion.
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