The rumors have been around for years. She even made light about them recently. But Oprah Winfrey has once again stated flatly: "I'm not a lesbian."
"I'm not even kind of a lesbian," the talk-show queen, 56, tells Barbara Walters in tonight's interview on ABC. "And the reason why [the rumor] irritates me is because it means that somebody must think I'm lying. That's number one. Number two ... why would you want to hide it? That is not the way I run my life."
The rumors have focused on Winfrey's friend Gayle King. But Winfrey says that relationship is extremely close in a whole different way.
"She is ... the mother I never had. She is ... the sister everybody would want. She is the friend that everybody deserves. I don't know a better person. I don't know a better person," Winfrey says while choking up.
"It's making me cry because I'm thinking about ... how much ... I probably have never told her that. Tissue, please. I now need tissue. I've never told her that."
The occasion for the interview, airing tonight at 9:00 pm (ET) on ABC, is the end of Winfrey's syndicated show next May and the beginning of her new cable network – OWN, The Oprah Winfrey Network.
On that subject, Winfrey admits to having been afraid of how daunting the new project is. "I was very scared," she says. "I would wake up in the middle of the night literally like clutching my chest, like, 'What have I done? What have I done?'"
She’s baaack!
Three years after leaving The View, Rosie O’Donnell is coming back to daytime television by teaming up with OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network for her own daily talk show.
“Rosie is an undeniable talent who has captivated TV audiences for nearly 20 years,” Winfrey, 56, said Thursday in a statement. “She’s a true original, who brings her authentic voice, dynamic energy and pure passion to everything she does.”
The show, according to OWN, will be “fun” and “uplifting” with O’Donnell’s “playful and energetic style.”
“It’s an honor and privilege to work with Oprah Winfrey on her network,” says O’Donnell, 48, who will produce the show, which will premiere in 2011 and be based in New York.
O’Donnell, who had her own Emmy-winning show from 1996 to 2002, hasn’t exactly been low-key since her departure from The View. Along with her blog, she’s also hosted her own daily Sirius XM radio show since last fall.
In January, she debuted her HBO documentary A Family Is a Family Is a Family: A Rosie O’Donnell Celebration, which highlights different family dynamics.
The queen of daytime talk is primed to conquer the night.
Oprah Winfrey's new network, OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, unveiled on Thursday programming for its Januart 1st launch. The lineup includes Oprah's Next Chapter, featuring Winfrey "getting untethered from the chairs, opening up her world and taking you with her," the network said in a statement.
Winfrey fans can expect "a whole new kind of Oprah show" that will feature "riveting conversations with the people we all want to hear from, in some very unexpected places," from the "Taj Mahal to [Winfrey's] beloved oak tree, the Great Wall to her own teahouse," the statement continues.
Other shows in the OWN lineup include Visionaries: Inside the Creative Mind, which already has Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am and Oscar-winning director James Cameron on deck, Gayle King Live! and Why Not? With Shania Twain.
In addition, OWN also announced the launch of Your Own Show: Oprah's Search for the Next TV Star. Winfrey will partner with reality producer Mark Burnett on a nationwide search to discover the big TV host. Details will be announced on The Oprah Winfrey Show in May.
"My vision for OWN is to create a network that inspires our viewers and makes them want to be who they are on their best day," Winfrey said in a statement.
In late 2009, Winfrey, 56, announced the end of the 25-year run of The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Is Oprah Winfrey close to ending her talk show?
Winfrey is developing a new cable channel, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), with Discovery Communications, and the company's CEO said in a conference call Friday that Winfrey will not renew her syndicated talk show contract when it expires in September 2011.
"The expectation is that after that, her show will go off of ABC in syndication and she will come to OWN," Discovery CEO David Zaslav said, according to the Chicago Tribune. "We're talking now about what the presence will be and what kind of programming she would be involved in directly. But this is her Chapter 2, and building the OWN brand online and on-air is . . . a core mission for her."
But Winfrey's production company says nothing is settled.
"She has not made a final decision as to whether she will continue her show in syndication after her contract expires in 2011," Harpo representative Lisa Halliday said.
The rumors have been around for years. She even made light about them recently. But Oprah Winfrey has once again stated flatly: "I'm not a lesbian."
