Oprah is now speaking her truth about an episode of her show that went viral over the weekend.
You’ve probably seen it. It’s a clip from a 2006 episode, where she tastes an award-winning chicken dish made by a white woman. But for some god awful reason, this woman did not add any seasoning to the meat before presenting a lightly browned chicken breast to Oprah. Oprah!
Twitter user Spencer Althouse brought our collective memory up to speed by posting the clip, which quickly circulated the web. Watching the video is delightfully painful, as we see Oprah struggling to balance being nice to her guest Anna Ginsberg with the baffling reality that this woman has never heard of spices. "I do like it," Winfrey told Ginsberg, who won $1 million for the recipe (how?!).
"Did we add salt and pepper?" Oprah asked politely. "I think we needed salt and pepper.”
“You can add it in yourself," Ginsberg said.
As BuzzFeed News points out, the tweet has almost 60,000 retweets and over 4 million views since it was posted, and now Winfrey is clarifying her thoughts 12 years later. "Okay Spencer, I don't know whatever made you pull that tape out of the vault," she said in a new Instagram video. "But it made me laugh."
In the IG post, Winfrey opens up about wanting to give her guests a good experience, while also standing in her truth. During the 2006 episode, those interests were at odds.
"So I was having a moment of trying to decide: Do I want her to have a great time? What is my real moment of truth?" she said. "Because the truth for me was that I'm used to having salt and pepper on my chicken. That's just the truth...That's what I was thinking, 'This chicken needs some salt and pepper.'"
For the love of all things poultry listen to Oprah, and always season your chicken.
