Oprah Winfrey Says 60 Minutes Made Her Practice Saying Her Name, Thrilled to Be Off the Show

Oprah Winfrey said she is no longer working as a contributor to 60 Minutes, saying the legendary news magazine wasn’t a good fit for her.

“It was not the best format for me,” Winfrey told The Hollywood Reporter in a profile for the latest issue of their magazine.

“How should I say this? Never a good thing when I have to practice saying my name and have to be told that I have too much emotion in my name,” she continued.

“I had a deja vu moment because I’ve actually lived through this once before when I covered a story as a young reporter [where] the family had lost their home and my boss told me that I reported it with too much emotion.”

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“I had too much emotion in the story. I thought, “OK, so you’re not supposed to be involved in the story, I get that. You’re a journalist. But the same thing is true even with a read [at 60 Minutes].”

“I think I did seven takes on just my name because it was ‘too emotional.’ I go, ‘Is there too much emotion in the Oprah part or the Winfrey part?’ I was working on pulling myself down and flattening out my personality, which, for me, is actually not such a good thing.”

Oprah formally stepped away from the program in October 2018 to help stump for Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who went on to ultimately lose a close race to her Republican challenger Brian Kemp.

Winfrey’s relationship with the network had been in limbo until now.