Oprah Winfrey recalls being body shamed by Joan Rivers on The Tonight Show: ‘I’ll let you come back if you lose 15 pounds’

Oprah Winfrey recalled the moment she was body-shamed by the late Joan Rivers while making her first appearance on The Tonight Show in 1985.

The talk show host, 70, remembered being interviewed by Rivers and shared her reaction to being called out over her weight while appearing on The Jamie Kern Lima Show podcast.

‘I’ve been shamed on The Tonight Show by Joan Rivers. I had my first appearance on The Tonight Show,’ she shared.

Joan Rivers turns to me and she says, “Tell me, why are you so fat?”… on national television,’ Oprah – who has admitted to using weight loss drugs – went on.

‘And I don’t know what to do with that. I just am like, “Well, I just love potato chips, Joan.” She [goes], “No seriously! Shame on you! Shame on you!”‘

The media mogul then shared that Rivers told her she could return to the late-night show if she lost weight.

‘”I’ll let you come back if you lose 15 pounds. You need to lose 15 pounds.” She says to me on national television.’

‘And I accepted. I accept that I should be shamed because how dare me, be sitting up here on The Tonight Show.’

Oprah said she ‘had agreed that I was going to go away and lose 15 pounds,’ but stated that instead she ended up gaining weight.

‘Of course, I didn’t lose the 15 pounds. I went and ate my way to another 10 pounds,’ she shared.

Oprah shared that she had previously auditioned for 1985’s The Color Purple but did not hear back anything at the time and assumed she didn’t get the role because she was ‘overweight.’

She then decided to go away to a ‘health retreat’ to lose weight, explaining ‘at the time, they called them “fat farms.”‘

While there, Winfrey says she tried to accept that her weight had cost her the role, and she let go of her dream of starring in the film.