This month Oprah Winfrey arrives on our movie screens as the powerful Mrs Which in the children’s fantasy movie A Wrinkle in Time… but could she also be destined for real-life power as President of the United States?
Once upon a time, it would seem truly mad that a TV star, with a billion-dollar company named after themselves, who had never spent a day in public office, might decide to run for president. Well… here we are. So it’s not a huge wonder that the rally cry of “Oprah 2020” gained such force so quickly following Oprah Winfrey’s Golden Globes speech in January and doesn’t seem to be going away.
We’re just over three months into 2018 and already it’s looking like a standout year for Oprah, with a grassroots presidential campaign, numerous magazine covers and her very own action figure, courtesy of her role in Disney’s A Wrinkle in Time, filmed in New Zealand in early 2017.
In some ways, it makes sense that Oprah would aim to be the first woman president – politics is one of the only arenas she hasn’t conquered. She was a reporter, then a local talkshow host, then the star of her eponymous daytime show, an Academy award-nominated actress, the first black billionaire.
The question is less should she run for president and more… why would she want to? Particularly because, at 64, Oprah seems to truly be living her best life.
In a recent interview, she gave a telling insight into what has changed for her now that she’s in her 60s.
“You take no shit. None. Not a bit. In your 40s you want to say you take no shit, but you still do. In your 60s you take none. There’s both a quickening and a calming – there’s a sense that you don’t have as much time on earth as you once did. For me, there’s also a sense of calming about that… I don’t have time for it. By that I mean people coming with anything less than what is the truth or authentic? Don’t even try.”
But, luckily for us down under, she still goes full Oprah when describing her time in New Zealand. Oprah was first here in 2015 for her speaking events but returned the following year to film A Wrinkle in Time alongside Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling. The three actresses became fast friends – and unofficial ambassadors for Aotearoa while they were here.
“I am telling you: if you want to expand yourself as an individual on the planet Earth, New Zealand’s the place to go,” Oprah told Vogue.
“The people are 100 per cent present. They are not walking across the street on their cellphones. Every single corner you turn, there is some breathtaking something or other going on: Lakes! Glaciers! Eagles! It’s crazy.”
The movie is based on the children’s book by Madeleine L’Engle and is a fantasy film – something New Zealand is pretty good at providing a background for. It’s been directed by Ava DuVernay, the first African-American woman to direct a movie with a budget over $100 million.
It is – said in Oprah’s enthusiastic voice – a BIG deal. And it was that factor, plus New Zealand, that lured Oprah in. In the past, Oprah has cherry-picked her acting roles, with nearly all of them telling a uniquely female, African-American story. But in A Wrinkle in Time, she is Mrs Which, a Glinda the Good Witch-esque character, with a curly blonde wig and bejewelled face.
Oprah in A Wrinkle In Time.
Because she is so well-known for being on our TV screens as a talkshow host, it can be easy to forget that Oprah actually started out as an actress. She was hand-picked by Steven Spielberg to star in his acclaimed adaptation of The Colour Purple when she was 32 – her very first film role – and was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards in 1983. Last year she starred in the HBO movie The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and it was lauded as her best role yet, with critics calling her work “phenomenal”.
But it was just this past January when Oprah gave the performance of a lifetime in her glorious, generation-defining speech when she accepted the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes. In just under 10 minutes she managed to set the world on fire and have people seriously consider her as a presidential figure.
As the first black woman to accept the prestigious award, she gave this award season’s Time’s Up movement the battle cry it had been waiting for following the string of sexual assault scandals rocking Hollywood.
“What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have,” she told the A-list audience.
“I’m especially proud and inspired by all the women who have felt strong enough and empowered enough to speak up and share their personal stories… I want to express gratitude to all the women who have endured years of abuse and assault because they, like my mother, had children to feed and bills to pay and dreams to pursue.”
Telling women’s stories has been Oprah’s raison d’être ever since her career began. In the same way that “Gwyneth” has become synonymous with all things wellbeing, “Oprah” has long been shorthand for anything to do with women’s emotions, due to the years she spent conducting tear-jerking interviews on her famous couch. But it can be easy to forget where she came from, and just how unlikely her success story is.
Born to two teenage parents, Oprah grew up in Mississippi in the 1950s, during a point of intense racial segregation. She was raised by her single mother and grandmother, whose biggest dream was that Oprah would work for some “good white folks… who treat you nice”.
When she was nine years old, Oprah was raped by a cousin and then faced years of sexual abuse from other family members. She started dating young and got pregnant at 14, but the child died just days after being born.
Oprah has admitted she felt relief, knowing this was an opportunity for a second chance. She became an honours student, joined the drama club, and won a beauty pageant, in which she was sponsored by a local radio station. It was there she got her first big break, when she was asked to record a news report and then offered a part-time job on the spot.
A successful TV presenting career in Baltimore followed and, in 1983, when producers in Chicago were looking for a new face to host a new morning show, Oprah’s show reel ended up in the hands of legendary TV producer Dennis Swanson.
He’s widely credited as the man who launched her career – and was the first person she thanked in her famous Golden Globes speech. He has previously said he couldn’t believe his luck when he saw how talented she was. When he offered her the job, Oprah asked Dennis if he had any concerns, then offered her own. As he has recalled previously: “She said, ‘Well, you know I’m black!’ and I said, ‘I think I have that figured out,'”
“Then she said, ‘Well, I’m overweight.’ And I said, ‘So am I, so are many Americans.'” Dennis told her not to change a thing, and the only thing she had to worry about was staying down-to-earth when – not if – she became famous.
Oprah, apparently, was shocked by this, and asked Dennis did he really think she was going to be that successful. Dennis replied, “Lady, this is going to cost me money in the negotiation, but you’re going to shoot the lights out!”
A portrait of Oprah Winfrey upon becoming co anchor of Eyewitness News on WJZ, with co host Jerry Turner, Baltimore, Maryland, June 26, 1978.
His instincts were correct. Three years later, A.M. Chicago was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show and Oprah was on her way to becoming one of the most famous women on the planet.
Currently her estimated worth is around $4 billion, but even after ending her show in 2011 she’s only become busier. She started her own television network, was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama, was nominated for a BAFTA for her role in The Butler, joined the Board of Directors of Weight Watchers and became a contributor to 60 Minutes.
In fact, it’s her most recent work with the iconic news show that saw Oprah become one of the latest targets of the current US president, Donald Trump. She sat down with a group of Americans who represented the current political divide – half of whom supported Trump, half who didn’t.
It was the second time she’d met with the group onscreen, and it was designed to illustrate that there was more in common between them than their voting record would have indicated.
Trump did not agree, taking to Twitter to state: “Just watched a very insecure Oprah Winfrey, who at one point I knew very well, interview a panel of people on 60 Minutes. The questions were biased and slanted, the facts incorrect. Hope Oprah runs so she can be exposed and defeated just like all of the others!”
Oprah with partner Stedman Graham, who says if the people wanted her to run for president, “She would absolutely do it.”
He’s not joking when he says he used to know her very well; the pair were once very friendly and back in 1999 when someone first floated the idea of him becoming president, Trump named Oprah as his first choice to be vice-president.
“She’s a terrific woman, she’s somebody that’s very special. If she’d do it, she’d be fantastic. She’s popular, she’s brilliant, she’s a wonderful woman.” And back in 2005, when he was asked again about running for president alongside her, he maintained she’d be the perfect choice because “she knows how to win”.
Of course, this was all hypothetical back in 1999 and 2005. Who would have predicted that we would now live in this world – apart, perhaps, from Trump himself?
Ever since “Oprah 2020” became such a frenzied topic, she has been quick to shut down rumours of a run for president. “I’ve never looked outside for other people to tell me when I should be making a move,” she explains.
“And wouldn’t I know? If God wanted me to run, wouldn’t God tell me? I haven’t heard that.”
Yet that hasn’t stopped people wondering “What if?” In a recent CNN poll, Oprah came in third as the potential Democratic candidate, after Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, and her long-time partner Stedman Graham has said that it’s “up to the people… She would absolutely do it.”
There’s no denying she’s getting more political, recently donating $500,000 to the gun protest movement in America. There’s still a year to go before the race to the White House for 2020 really gets started, so maybe for now we just have to watch this space.
But for a woman who’s spent her entire life breaking boundaries, it would be a fitting next move to become the first female US president. And if we can get used to saying President Trump, surely we can get used to President Winfrey?
