Oprah Winfrey Reflects on the Hurtful Thing Joan Rivers Said About Her Weight on Live TV

Oprah Winfreyis opening up about being body-shamed by the late Joan Rivers.

On a recent episode of the Jamie Kern Lima Show podcast, the media mogul recalled being invited to talk about her then-booming TV show, A.M. Chicago, during her first appearance on The Tonight Show in 1985.

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“Joan Rivers turns to me and she says, ‘Tell me, why are you so fat?’” she recalled.

She went on to say she was so stunned by having her weight called out “on national television” that she didn’t know “what to do with that.”

“I just [said], like, ‘Oh, I just love potato chips, Joan,’” she said, to which the late comedian said back, “Shame on you.”

“I’ll let you come back if you lose 15 lbs. You need to lose 15 lbs,” Joan then added.

“I accept[ed] that I should be shamed, because how dare me, be sitting up here on The Tonight Show,” Oprah recalled.

“Of course, I didn’t lose the 15 lbs. I went and ate my way to another 10 lbs,” Oprah said, adding that it led her to enroll in a “health retreat” to slim down.

“At the time, they called them ‘fat farms,’” she said. She is now one of many stars who have admitted to using weight loss drugs like Ozempic.