Oprah Winfrey says the turning point in her television career came when she realized she did not want television to use her anymore.
Speaking at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, where she received the Cannes Lionsheart award, Winfrey reflected on purpose, brand responsibility, audience trust, philanthropy, her Mississippi childhood, and the moment The Oprah Winfrey Show became more than a syndicated talk show.
Winfrey told delegates at the Lumière Theatre in the Palais des Festivals that the realization came in 1989, three years after the launch of her show. By then, she understood the power her platform could have and decided to use it intentionally.
“I said to the producer, ‘We’re not going to let TV use us any more. We’re going to use it as a force for good. Every show we do, in some form or another, is going to speak to their lives and what the yearning and the search is for all of us,’” Winfrey recalled.
That philosophy helped define The Oprah Winfrey Show, which ran for more than 4,500 episodes, won nearly 50 Daytime Emmys, and made Winfrey one of the most influential figures in television. Her career also extended into film, including her Oscar and Golden Globe-nominated performance in The Color Purple.
Winfrey said the connection she built with her audience became so strong that, during Whitney Houston’s final appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, she was able to ask the studio crowd not to release images after Houston fell off the stage while performing.
“I had such trust from The Oprah Show audience,” Winfrey said. “The first interview I did with [Houston], when I had gone behind the stage, when I asked her about her intention, she was clean, but the day she came to perform in front of the audience, she was not, and she fell off the stage.”
Winfrey said she understood immediately how damaging the images could be. “I knew that if that story got out, she would be destroyed by that,” said Winfrey. “Even though the audience 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.”
During the conversation, Winfrey also recalled how her audience became an informal focus group. Early in the show’s run, she stopped signing autographs after tapings and instead began sitting with audience members to learn why they had come and what they took away from the experience.
“I’d been doing the autographs because that is what everybody else wanted me to do,” she said. “I actually just wanted to sit down and talk to people and see why they came to the show and what they got out of it. I learned so much just from listening to people, and that became my focus group.”
Those conversations helped shape the show’s direction. “I would have a producer in taking notes and we would build shows based on what people were telling us about their lives,” Winfrey said. “We built a brand based on my heart and what I needed to serve myself.”
Winfrey also spoke about intention, a concept she has long associated with the work of author Gary Zukav, who appeared on her show multiple times and has remained part of her broader conversation about purpose and spiritual growth.
“When your personality comes to serve the energy of your soul, that is authentic empowerment,” Winfrey said. “Nobody can take that away from you. No amount of views, sales, or subscriptions will rise and fall.”
She said she came to see herself as a stand-in for the viewer, someone asking questions on behalf of millions of people watching at home. “I recognized early on I was a surrogate for the viewers,” she said. “When I think about that show and what that show meant to me, it did so much because of the people supporting it.”
Winfrey said the show’s power came from trying to meet people where they were emotionally and spiritually. “There is not a day that goes by in my life, even here in Cannes, that people don’t come up to me and say they watched it,” she said. “I realized that we were speaking to the hearts of people.”
The media icon also pointed to her childhood in Mississippi as a formative influence on her commitment to service. She recalled a Christmas when her family had no presents before nuns arrived at the house with gifts.
“It wasn’t the gift, it was the fact that they showed up,” said Winfrey. “They showed up, and they let a 12-year-old girl know that she mattered.”
That memory later helped inspire the creation of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa.
Winfrey was honored at Cannes Lions with the Lionsheart award, which recognizes public figures who have used their platform to make a positive impact.
For the former 60 Minutes contributor, that impact began with a simple decision: stop letting television define the work and start using television to serve the people watching.
All Cannes news can be found here.
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