Oprah (20 page)

Cook told
The Star
that Oprah was using her influence to stop him from telling his story. Oprah denied the charge and called him “a liar” and “a drug addict” who could not be trusted or believed. Further, Cook alleged, she said he would be very sorry if he told his story to anyone else. He backed off, eventually relapsed into drugs, and finally reentered recovery.

By then Oprah had learned that someone else claiming to have done drugs with her in Baltimore had also sold a story to the
National Enquirer,
and while the story had not been published, she felt threatened that soon her drug past would be splashed all over the tabloids. “We did have a story in the works entitled ‘I Was Oprah’s Drug Dealer,’ but it got killed at the last minute,” recalled the
Enquirer
’s senior editor. “As I recall, he came to us and we paid him, after he passed a lie detector test.”

“I interviewed the guy in Baltimore who claimed he was Oprah’s boyfriend when she worked at the local station,” said the writer Jerry Oppenheimer. “He did coke with her and, as I recall, he had also sold drugs for a living when he was involved with her. He had photographs
of the two of them together—that was always a
National Enquirer
requirement, that and passing a lie detector test—and I felt he was credible…a street guy but pretty articulate and very nice, very likeable.”

Like most celebrities, Oprah came to despise the tabloids. Early in her career she had cooperated with them on stories about herself, even provided personal photographs, and paid someone to plant “do-good” stories about her donations to charities. But once she became famous, she reviled the grocery store weeklies as “verbal pornography” and railed against their coverage of her. She fired employees who leaked information to them and instituted a company rule that no one was allowed to say her name outside of the office. In public they were instructed to refer to her as “Mary,” so that conversations overheard in restaurants or bars would not become tabloid fodder. They also were forbidden to take candid pictures of her. She became obsessed with the coverage of her weight in the tabloids, and their unflattering photos frequently brought her to tears.

“I once put a reporter on twenty-four-hour coverage of Oprah on vacation at Necker Island with Stedman,” said a former assignment editor for the
National Enquirer.
“When Stedman went out to play golf, Oprah called room service and ordered two pecan pies. Our reporter helped the waiter with delivery. Oprah answered the door. No one else was in the room with her. An hour later she called room service to pick up the empty tins outside her door, which our guy photographed….Of all the stories we did on Oprah and her weight over the years, that one stands out in my mind because of what it told me about the kind of obesity bingeing she did in secret when no one was around.”

Her dearest friends pleaded with Oprah to ignore the tabloids: “They are not you,” said Maya Angelou. “You are not in those stories.” But Oprah knew that her audience was the tabloids’ audience: they shared the same demographics. The women who watched her show every day shopped for groceries every week, and they saw the sensational stories each time they approached the cash register. Oprah assumed that most people were like her and believed what they read.

Having been sold out to the tabloids by money-hungry relatives and friends in the past, she now decided to take control. Meeting with her staff at the end of 1994, she discussed presenting a show on drug
abuse so that she could allude (generally, with no specifics) to her own drug experience. The show would feature mothers, because women look more sympathetic than men do talking about dealing with their addictions. The hour would be taped—not live—so the show could be edited, if necessary. By then Oprah’s ratings had fallen off by 13 percent in the last two seasons, but she remained high in public esteem, and some on her staff worried about the possible backlash from such an admission. But she felt she had no choice.

The show, taped on January 11, 1995, was heavily promoted. During the taping, Oprah broke down and made her tearful admission: “I did your drug,” she told a mother who was talking about her addiction to crack cocaine. “It’s my life’s great big secret that has always been held over my head.” Beyond that she offered no specifics as to where, when, or with whom she had done drugs, but her public admission now insulated her from anyone from her past stepping forward.

Oprah’s revelation made national news, and her spokeswoman, Deborah Johns, told reporters that it was “totally spontaneous.” Tim Bennett, president of Harpo Productions, concurred. “[P]urely spontaneous,” he said. “From her heart, from Oprah.” But Chicago columnists Bill Zwecker and Robert Feder, with sources deep inside Harpo, knew better; they reported that Oprah’s admission was a premeditated ploy to boost her ratings and came about because unnamed others had threatened to reveal her secret themselves.

“Nothing is spontaneous with Oprah,” said a former employee in 2007. “It may seem spontaneous, but it’s all as carefully choreographed as Kabuki. She’s fabulous on television—no one’s better—but nothing is left to chance….She’s like Ronald Reagan. In Hollywood he was considered a B actor, not one of the greats. Not even close. But he was a magnificent communicator on television, with just enough acting ability to appear sincere. Oprah is the same way. She knows how to cry on cue. She once told me that every tear is worth half a ratings point, and she can cry on a dime.” The former employee noted that Oprah’s biggest revelations came during or right before sweeps weeks (February, May, July, and November). “Ratings are everything to Oprah.”

Whether her drug-use admission was designed to fuel her ratings or to defuse the tabloids, Oprah had been able to reveal her secret in a
soft and sympathetic setting, and felt a great weight lifted. “I no longer have to worry about that now,” she said. “I understand the shame. I understand the guilt. I understand the secrecy.”

Following Oprah’s public drug admission, Randy Cook filed a $20 million lawsuit against her for slander and emotional distress, but she was racked and ready. “I will fight this suit until I am bankrupt before I give even a penny to this liar,” she was quoted as saying. In court documents, she later denied making the “liar” statement. By then Cook, with no visible means of employment, looked like a desperate man trying to feed off a former relationship with a famous woman who was now worth millions. His lawsuit was dismissed by the U.S. District Court of Illinois, but he appealed, and the U.S. Seventh Circuit reinstated several counts of his complaint. After two years of legal skirmishes, Oprah was forced to respond to his interrogatories. In her answers, she finally admitted what she had so long denied: That she and Cook had had sexual relations, and that she and Cook had used cocaine on a regular and consistent basis.

Cook won the right to a jury trial, but before a date could be set, he dismissed his suit “at the behest of [my] dying mother.” He said his family and friends begged him not to go to court against Oprah Winfrey, but as late as 2007 he was still looking to be paid for his story of the five-month affair he had had more than two decades earlier, and he was still trying—unsuccessfully—to peddle his tell-all book. He claimed that he and Oprah were addicts when they lived together in 1985, but he did not know how she got off drugs. “On a few occasions, Oprah and I would be up all night getting high. Gayle King was set to arrive at the condo those same mornings….We would clean up all the evidence and act like nothing happened moments before Gayle walked through the door. It wasn’t until Oprah and I broke up that Gayle found out [about the drugs]. But when she did, she intervened and very well could have been the one who got Oprah off drugs for good,” he said. “The last time I saw Oprah was in 1985 before she left to film
The Color Purple.
”

A
N IMMUTABLE
bond exists among black women born in the South and rocked in the arms of grandmothers who wore Sunday church hats, swayed to spirituals, and instilled reverence for “the ancestors.” When these women meet as strangers they embrace as sisters because they are connected to the soil of country roads in Arkansas, bayous in Louisiana, backwoods in Georgia, and swamps of Mississippi. They know each other before they are introduced.

“It was that connection to the goodness and strength of southern women that bound me to Oprah,” recalled Alice Walker, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of
The Color Purple.
“I wrote the role of Sofia based on my mother and gave Quincy Jones [producer] and Steven Spielberg [director] a picture of her when she was Oprah’s age. So when Quincy saw Oprah on television he was looking at my mother….When I met Oprah, I, too, saw my mother. That’s the root of my affection for her, and despite the distance she’s put between us since we made the film in 1985, I still feel grateful to her. She arrived to carry the spirit of my mother and she did it really, really well.”

Oprah credited her self-confidence to her Southern roots. “I’m very blessed because I was raised in the South in Nashville and Mississippi,” she said. “The whole Southern upbringing left me feeling I can
do anything. It didn’t do to me what it does to a lot of people. I never in my life felt oppressed.”

Almost all the women who worked on
The Color Purple
had some connection to the South, and that sensibility of sisterhood contributed to what Alice Walker called the “holy experience” of making the movie. Before she sold the film rights, she insisted that the producer and director commit themselves to a diverse cast and crew. “I got it in writing that at least fifty percent of those hired had to be black, female or other minority,” she said. “It was a happy set because we all came together in a blessed way to tell the story.”

The director, Steven Spielberg, did not want a cast of unknowns for what he called his first serious film. After signing Whoopi Goldberg, then unknown, for the lead of Celie, he hoped to sign Tina Turner for the singing role of Shug Avery. He planned to eliminate the lesbianism in the novel and film only one sweet kiss between Celie and Shug, but he wanted Whoopi Goldberg to feel comfortable. “If I’m going to kiss a woman, please let it be Tina,” Whoopi said. Turner was also the first choice of the writer, the producer, and the casting director. Assuming she was on board, Quincy Jones scheduled her meeting with the director, but, as he said later, she flipped on him.

“I wouldn’t do a black picture if I was dying,” Turner said. “It took me twenty years to get out of that black shit and I ain’t going back.”

Jones said he was so shocked he couldn’t open his mouth. “But I certainly understood her feelings about not wanting to play an abused woman.” He knew about the years of beatings she had endured from her former husband. So the role went to the actress Margaret Avery, who performed brilliantly and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. But Tina’s rejection left the cast with no known stars and a soupçon of bile. “She turns down
The Color Purple
and she does
Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.
All the while saying that she’s seeking credibility as an actress,” said Whoopi Goldberg. “Give me a break.”

Quincy Jones wrote in his autobiography that Tina Turner’s reaction reflected the attitude of Hollywood at the time. “Nobody wanted to make a black movie,” he said, explaining the resistance he had to overcome to get the film made in 1985. Statistics backed him up. During
that summer’s release of teenage films, there had not been one black female face on-screen. So Jones decided to pursue the popular mainstream director of
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,
whose magic made millions believe in the humanity of a wrinkled rubber alien who looked like Elmer Fudd. The producer then had to convince Alice Walker that Steven Spielberg was the right person to make her book into a major motion picture. Reluctant at first, Walker finally came around. “I guess if he can make people believe in Martians, he can do the same for our folks,” she said.

Decades after writing the novel that brought her wealth, acclaim, and international recognition, Alice Walker maintained that
The Color Purple
was a gift given to her to give to others. Her lack of ego about writing the saga of a poor country girl’s life of physical and sexual abuse by men elevated the process of filming for everyone. “We all wanted to make Alice proud,” said Margaret Avery.

Oprah said that being chosen for the role of Sofia was the single happiest day of her life, and filming the movie was “the only time I ever felt part of a family surrounded by unconditional love.” She recalled the experience with near-worshipful awe. “It was a spiritual evolvement for me,” she said. “I learned to love people doing that film.”

She forged strong friendships on the set, but few survived the passage of time. She fell out with Whoopi Goldberg, who would later compare her to Lonesome Rhodes, the power-hungry monster in
A Face in the Crowd;
she tangled with Akosua Busia, who also appeared with her in
Native Son
and wrote the first screenplay for
Beloved,
the movie Oprah felt would make her a film legend. She pulled away from Alice Walker and offended Steven Spielberg, but she held tight to Quincy Jones. “I love him more than any human being in the world,” she once said. Revered for his musical genius, “Q,” as his friends call him, opened his influential Hollywood circle to Oprah and made her part of his celebrity world. She once sent him a T-shirt that read: “Oprah Loves Me Unconditionally. I Can Never Fuck Up.”

Later she would say that it was divine destiny that she got the role of Sofia in
The Color Purple.
“I wasn’t really, really, really surprised,” she said. “It’s exactly what was supposed to happen. To me.”

Whether from God or good luck, her casting could definitely be
credited to her girth. In the spring of 1985 she had gone to a fat farm to try to lose weight and win the bet she had made with Joan Rivers on
The Tonight Show.
While pounding the track, she received a call from the casting director, Reuben Cannon, who warned, “If you lose one pound, you lose the part.” She immediately packed her bags and hightailed it to the nearest Dairy Queen.