Last night in Chicago, all eyes and cameras were supposed to be on the premiere of The Twilight Saga: New moon. However, Oprah instantly snagged all attention after it was released that her show will soon be coming to an end.
This morning, a mournful Oprah announced that her show will come to a close in 2011, saying, “after much prayer and months of careful thought, I have decided that next season,” her 25th, “will be the last season of the Oprah Winfrey Show.”
Oprah admitted that in September of 1986, she was “beyond excited” when her show was first nationally televised. Yet, “I never would have imagined the yellow brick road of blessings” that the popular show has brought her. Now, a multibillionaire, Oprah’s holdings also include a magazine and an upcoming cable network.
Tearfully, Oprah announced to her audience, “you have enriched my life beyond all measure.”
“You have all invited me into your lives,” she continued. “We’ve grown together. I want you all to know that my relationship with you is one that I hold very dear. Your trust in me, your sharing your precious time with me . . . has brought me the greatest joy that I have ever known.”
And to put all rumors and speculations aside, Oprah explained why she’s made this momentous decision.
“25 years feels right in my bones and my spirit. It’s the perfect number, the exact right time.”
With a final promise that her concluding season will “knock your socks off,” she exclaimed, “the countdown to the end of the Oprah Winfrey Show starts now. I am going to soak up every beautiful, joyful moment with you.”
Well this really does mark the end of an era. Oprah, we truly will cherish and enjoy every last episode.
Cherish the next two years of The Oprah Winfrey because the bitch is moving out!
Tim Bennett, the president of Harpo, Oprah’s production company, has announced that the show will go off the air.
“Tomorrow, Oprah will announce live on The Oprah Winfrey Show that she has decided to end what is arguably one of the most popular, influential and enduring programs in television history,” the statement read. “The sun will set on the Oprah show as its 25th season draws to a close on September 9, 2011.”
Maybe now she’ll have more time to focus on working out?!
Sarah Palin appeared on today’s Oprah Winfrey Show where she was not afraid to share her opinion of Levi Johnston’s “aspiring porn” career, referring to it as “a bit heartbreaking.”
The former Alaska governor continued, saying “I believe he goes by the name Ricky Hollywood now… He’s quite busy with the media tours.. That’s Levi’s gig right now.”
However, she did lighten up a bit when she noted that Johnston will “forever be the father of this beautiful baby [grandson Tripp],” reports ETOnline.
Additionally, Palin had said that Johnston would be welcome to the Palin table for Thanksgiving, but he was having nothing of it.
“You could tell by her laugh she was full of it,” he reportedly told Playgirl on Friday. The idea was “a nice gesture but she didn’t mean it,” he added, saying that Thanksgiving day with the family would be “awkward.”
Also in the interview, Palin noted how “devastated” and “embarrassed” daughter Bristol was by the media coverage of her teenage pregnancy. “I was naive to think that the media would leave my kids alone,” she admitted to Winfrey.
Well we don’t know what’s more embarrassing… the fact that she was pregnant at such a young age and it was all over the media, or the fact that her baby’s daddy is an aspiring nude model! Yikes… that poor poor girl.
Most celebrities boast about the charities they are involved with or donate to, and usually it’s just another ploy to get in the headlines. However, The Giving Back Fund used public records to compile a list of the top 12 celebrities who gave the most in 2008, according to Parade magazine.
Here are the true stars who talk the talk and walk the walk!
1. Paul Newman
HOW MUCH: $21 million
TO CAUSES INCLUDING: Health initiatives, education, emergency campaigns, and environmental protection (before his death in September 2008)
2. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt
HOW MUCH: $13.4 million
TO CAUSES INCLUDING: A health clinic in Ethiopia; New Orleans redevelopment; the Armed Services YMCA
3. Mel Gibson
HOW MUCH: $6.5 million
TO CAUSES INCLUDING: Holy Family Church in Agoura Hills, Calif.
4. Richard Childress (former NASCAR racer)
HOW MUCH: $5 million
TO CAUSES INCLUDING: A pediatric trauma center in Winston-Salem, N.C.
5. Oscar De La Hoya
HOW MUCH: $3.5 million
TO CAUSES INCLUDING: A hospital and a charter school in Los Angeles
6. Oprah Winfrey
HOW MUCH: $2.4 million
TO CAUSES INCLUDING: After-school programs across the country and scholarships for students in Whitesboro, N.J.
7. Sam Waterston
HOW MUCH: $2.1 million
TO CAUSES INCLUDING: Refugees International; the American Institute for Stuttering
8. Yao Ming
HOW MUCH: $2 million
TO CAUSES INCLUDING: A fund to build earthquake-resistant schools in China
9. Patricia Comwell
HOW MUCH: $2 million
TO CAUSES INCLUDING: Harvard University and City University of New York
10. Barbara Streisand
HOW MUCH: $1.7 million
TO CAUSES INCLUDING: The Barbra Streisand Women’s Cardiovascular Research and Education Program in Los Angeles
11. Leonardo DiCaprio
HOW MUCH: $1.5 million
TO CAUSES INCLUDING: Community development; The Paris Review literary magazine
12. Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith
HOW MUCH: $1.5 million
TO CAUSES INCLUDING: The Baltimore School of the Arts; Malaria No More; The Make-A-Wish Foundation
Despite rumors, Jennifer Aniston will not be returning to television.
Recent reports have claimed that Jen agreed to host a weekly talk show for Oprah Winfrey’s new cable channel. Jen’s reps however deny all claims, calling them “absolutely false” to Usmagazine.com.
Additionally, the story, that broke on several national and international publications, stated that the salary wasn’t even a factor for the actress.
“She is doing this for one reason only — she absolutely wants to do it,” London’s Daily Express Newspaper alleged, citing a source close to the deal at the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). They also stated that late night talk show host Chelsea Handler played a role in Jen’s decision to take on the job. Umm… random?!
And while Jen does make rare appearances on shows like 30 Rock, the actress has yet to return to the small screen on a frequent basis since her ten-year role as Rachel Green on Friends.
We could never really picture Jen hosting a television show, that takes way more personality! Stick to the big screen and your troubled love stories Jen. It’s what you’re good at…
Madonna is heading back to Malawi, but this time with an agenda other than adoption.
The pop-diva is returning to the African country on behalf of her charity, Raising Malawi, to lay the foundation stone for the $15 million school she will be building there.
“She plans to meet the President Bingu wa Mutharika and together lay a foundation stone for her multi-million dollar girls school,” a staffer at the charity told Reuters Thursday.
The plan for this school comes just two years after Oprah, another high-profile philanthropist, opened a boarding school for girls in South Africa. The school opened in 2007 and was instantly shaken by two sex scandals in under two years.
Well, hopefully Madge can manage to successfully open her school and avoid any sex scandals in the years to come…
Oprah Winfrey is bringing out the big guns this season!
The talk show queen finally booked Sarah Palin on her show.
The outspoken Barack Obama supporter tried to get Palin on the show during the 2008 election season with no success. However, there’s nothing like releasing a book to change a person’s heart.
Palin is slated to go on the show on Nov. 16, which is the week her autobiography Going Rogue: An American Life hits bookstores.
Block party shmock party - now that’s the O party The Boots Girls want to crash! We foresee the claws coming out for this match and we can’t wait!
While we’re all aware of Oprah Winfrey’s book club, the news of her newest club has come as quite a shock to us!
That’s right ladies and gents, it appears that big O is also running a mile high club! In fact, she’s being sued by a flight attendant on her private jet because of it! Corrine Gehrls filed a lawsuit Friday denying allegations that she had sex on board.
In the suit Gehrls claims that fellow flight attendants Myron Gooch and Kirby Bumpus (AKA O’s BFF Gayle King’s daughter) made the accusation that caused her to be fired. Gehrls says Gooch accused her of doing the nasty with chief pilot Terry Pansing during a flight, while Oprah and other passengers slept “following their ingestion of sleeping pills.” UM WHAT?!
Although Gehrls and Pansing passed polygraph tests with flying colors after the accusation, they were not rehired.
Gehrls is damn pissed and is seeking more than $75,000 in damages from Gooch, Bumpus and Harpo Inc.
Ironically enough, a spokesperson for Harpo Inc. had no comment.
Damn, we never knew big O was so scandalous! Guess we’ll be canceling our book club membership and joining her new club!
Whitney Houston gave shocking details about her abusive 14-year marriage to ex-hubby Bobby Brown on Monday’s Oprah in her first interview in seven years.
“He slapped me once, but he got hit on the head three times by me,” Houston told O during a two-part interview which premiered Monday.
Houston said that once Brown even spat on her when he got drunk.
Houston said she “was horrified he spit on me, in my face” and that left her “very hurt, very angry.”
What a pig! Him, Chris Brown and Kanye West should start a loser club!
Houston went on to say that he resented her for loving him so much.
“He had such hate in his eyes for me, because I loved him so much.”
She said that when he got angry he’d cut her head off in pictures and paint evil eyes on their bedroom wall with spray paint. Um, can anyone say PSYCHO?!
“He was my drug,” Houston said of Brown. “I didn’t do anything without him.”
Houston admitted to battling addictions to cocaine and marijuana and she also said she felt the need to downplay her success to Brown.
“I tried to play down all the time,” Houston said. “I used to say, ‘I’m Mrs. Brown, don’t call me Houston.’”
It’s sad, but so many powerful women have to downplay their success for the sake of their husband’s ego!
As everyone in Chicago damn well knows by now, Oprah celebrated her season kickoff yesterday by taping her show at a block party with thousands of people on Michigan Avenue who surprised O by doing a choreographed dance to the Black Eyed Peas smash hit I Gotta A Feeling.
Well, The Boots Girls got quite the surprise too!
We headed down to the taping to cover the big block par-tay and arrived minutes before the taping began. O’s public relations peeps threw us, and one lone Chicago Sun-Times reporter, in a section that, unbeknownst to us, was full of hundreds of dancers.
Not only that, one of O’s street correspondents ended up standing right in front of us where she reported to O throughout the show’s taping.
When the Black Eyed Peas began dancing, each section of dancers began to dance when they heard their cue which is evident in the video. (Note: Keep in mind these dancers learned and practiced this dance for two days ALL day long!)
So when it was time for the dancers in our section to dance, all the cameras went to O’s correspondent standing in front of us and our section was aired on the dozens of jumbotrons set up all the way down Michigan Avenue.
The Boots Girls had NO IDEA this was going to happen and we were not filled in on this dance either. If the dance moves were subtle, we could’ve gone unnoticed. But, OF COURSE, the first move the dancers did in our section was ducking as low as possible for about 12 counts!
So, meanwhile, The Boots Girls were standing, frozen and completely terrified front in center like the biggest assholes in the world on all the jumbotrons not knowing what the f**k to do!!!
After the initial shock and humiliation wore off, I grabbed my assistant Nichole Berry’s shirt, pulled her down and screamed “DUCK!”
Uh, yeah, we’re praying the producers over at O kindly edit that out for tomorrow’s show! :-).
Thank God for real estate mogul Barry Schain’s booze cruise — and the Chicago Fire Department who let us use their red fire boat to hop on Schain’s boat right outside O’s set on the Chicago River — where we proceeded to drink our humiliation away!
