Oprah Winfrey said Whitney Houston fell off the stage during a performance on The Oprah Show after relapsing. Speaking at Cannes Lions, Winfrey said she then begged the audience not to put photos of the incident into the press.
Cannes Lions and The Oprah Show
Winfrey said the backstage exchange began with her asking Houston what she wanted to happen, then telling her what she wanted to happen. She described the performance as part of what she called one of the most powerful interviews from The Oprah Winfrey Show, and said Houston later returned to perform on the program after going back on drugs.
“We did the whole, ‘Hey girl, how you doing?’ greeting thing and then I stopped the cameras and I went behind stage and I said, ‘So tell me, what do you want to happen here? And I’m gonna tell you what I want to happen here,'” Winfrey said. She added, “I had such trust from ‘The Oprah Show’ audience … I think it was [Houston’s] last show with us, and she had gone back on drugs.”
Whitney Houston and the stage fall
Winfrey said the first backstage conversation found Houston clean, but the day she performed in front of the audience she was not, and then “she fell off of the stage.” She also said, “I knew that if that story got out … she would be destroyed by that.”
“And so even though the audience was there and the audience had cameras, I begged them not to put those pictures out because it would ruin her life, and they did not,” Winfrey said. That account leaves the incident framed as both a televised performance and a private crisis, with the audience acting as the only barrier between a bruising moment and a public one.
February 2012 and legacy
Houston died in February 2012 at the age of 48 after an accidental drowning. Winfrey’s comments at Cannes Lions put the old stage fall back into view while also tying it to the larger question of how much damage a public image can do when a performer is already in trouble.
Winfrey also used the appearance to talk about responsibility and influence, saying, “What you’re doing is not just making money and creating influence for yourself … it’s the subsidiary thing that happens from living,” and, “But you have a bigger calling in life … Your bigger job here on the planet is to be the best human being you can be, not the best creator, not the best talk show host, not the best podcaster, but how are you evolving into what creation intended for you to be?”
