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Oprah Winfrey has reflected on a tense behind the scenes moment involving Whitney Houston, while also praising the trust and cooperation of her studio audience during a difficult situation.
The media mogul, 72, spoke at Cannes Lions where she was honored with the festival's LionHeart Award. During her appearance, she revisited her interviews with the late music icon on The Oprah Winfrey Show and shared insights from their on screen conversations.
She recalled her first major interview with Houston in April 1999, describing how she briefly paused filming to speak with the singer privately before they continued the discussion.
"We did the whole, 'Hey girl, how you doing?' greeting thing and then I stopped the cameras and I went behind stage and I said, 'So tell me, what do you want to happen here? And I'm gonna tell you what I want to happen here,'" Winfrey said, calling it one of the most meaningful interviews she had conducted.
Winfrey also reflected on Houston's final appearance on her show in September 2009, a period when the singer was struggling with substance use. She explained that the studio audience witnessed an incident during the taping, but she acted quickly to prevent it from becoming public.
"I had such trust from The Oprah Show audience," she said. "I think it was her last show with us, and she had gone back on drugs. The first interview I did with her she was clean, but the day she came to my show to perform, she was not, and she fell off the stage."
Winfrey said she immediately understood the potential consequences if footage or photos from the moment were released.
"I knew that if that story got out, she would be destroyed by that," she said. "And so even though the audience was there and had cameras, I begged them not to put those pictures out because it would ruin her life, and they did not. That would not happen today."
Houston's final interview with Winfrey came a decade after their first conversation. In that discussion, she spoke openly about her struggles, her marriage to Bobby Brown and the emotional weight of addiction.
The singer, who died in 2012, left behind her daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown, who later passed away in 2015.
