It’s been all over the news – next week is Oprah Winfrey’s last show. Well, I doubt it is her last show, but it is the last episode of her highly successful “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” which has been on air for 25 years. Twenty-five-years? Do you realize there are grownups that don’t know life without “The Oprah Winfrey Show?”
Anyhow, it is a big deal and while the media has been talking about it every since Oprah announced the retirement of the show, this week, the frenzy is palpable.
Who will appear on Oprah’s last show? Actually, we don’t know that, but plenty of big names showed up in Chicago to film the third and second to the last shows. About 13,000 audience members got to see stars such as Madonna, Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise, Diane Sawyer, Halle Berry, Tom Hanks (who served as master of ceremonies for the first show), Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith (who served as the hosts of the second show), Jerry Seinfeld, Tyler Perry, Simon Cowell, and Michael Jordan, Usher, Alicia Keys, Aretha Franklin, Jamie Foxx, Stevie Wonder, and Beyonce at the United Center.
Hanks told Oprah she was “surrounded by nothing but love.” Oprah said, “I feel the love, and I thank you for it.”
Tom Cruise, who most notable jumped on Oprah’s couch when speaking of his love for Katie Holmes, told Oprah that she “had the power [to change lives], and that is the lesson you brought.” Holmes said reminded Oprah that her viewers had donated more than $12 million to the Women for Women charity and said, “Oprah, we love you. We thank you.”
Halle Berry told Oprah “The essence of ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ is that we’re all more alike than we are different.”
Beyonce said that because of Oprah, “women everywhere have graduated to a new level of understanding of who we are, of what we are, and most of all, who we can be.”
Madonna said Oprah had “balls and a wealth of compassion” and that she was inspired by Oprah and had “learned so much from her.”
Pinkett-Smith reminded Oprah that even though she didn’t have children, “you have mothered us…and that puts you in the status of a goddess.”
Even Oprah’s longtime boyfriend Stedman Graham showed up to say “Honey, you are so special…I love you for making a difference in my life.”
Do you plan on watching the last few Oprah shows?