Oprah Winfrey recalls Joan Rivers body-shaming her on TV: Why are you so fat?

Oprah Winfrey is shedding light on her first appearance on “The Tonight Show,” and how then-host Joan Rivers commented about her weight.While being a guest star on “The Jamie Kern Lime Show” podcast, Winfrey, 70, told Lime that she appeared on “The Tonight Show” in 1985 to discuss her successful TV show, “A.M.Chicago,” but instead the conversation shifted towards her body size.“Joan Rivers turned to me and she says ‘Tell me, why are you so fat?'” the former broadcast journalist told Lime, the founder of IT Cosmetics.Winfrey replied: “Oh, I just love potato chips Joan.”Rivers, who died in 2014 due to brain damage from lack of oxygen, told the former TV host “shame on you.”She added to Winfrey: “I’ll let you come back if you lose 15 lbs.

You need to lose 15 lbs.’”Winfrey emphasized that this was “On national television.And I don’t know what to do with that.”During the interview with Lime, Winfrey said she had agreed with Rivers.“And I accept it.

I accept that I should be shamed, because how dare me, be sitting up here on ‘The Tonight Show,'” she went on.Winfrey said that she and the late “Fashion Police” host “agreed that I was gonna go away and lose 15 lbs.And of course, I didn’t lose the 15 lbs.

I went and ate my way to another 10 lbs.”The “Color Purple” star would later go on a “health retreat” to lose weight, which were called “fat farms” at the time.Winfrey initially thought she lost her role in “The Color Purple” due to her weight.After letting go of the dream of acting in the movie, she got a life-changing phone call.Director Steven Spielberg heard that she was at a “fat farm” and told her: “You lose a pound, you could lose this part.”Winfrey told Lime that her call with Spielberg was a full-circle moment.“The instant I let go was the greatest life lesson I have ever received because I physically felt the release,” she said.

“The second I did that it changed.”Winfre...