– unsure if she’ll continue beyond this season
(EUR) Oprah Winfrey gave “Good Morning America” a preview of her talk show’s upcoming 24th year and revealed that she hasn’t yet made up her mind about whether she will continue past this season.
“I have to make that decision by the end of this year,” she said. “I am literally in thoughtful prayer and consideration to continue to go ahead. You’ll be hearing about it before the end of the year.”
The Monday, Sept. 14 season premiere of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” kicks off a much-anticipated two-part sit-down with Whitney Houston.
“I will tell you that in my preparation for my interview, I watched the interview you had done seven years ago,” Winfrey told “Good Morning America” co-anchor Diane Sawyer, who interviewed Houston in 2002. “Because I watched that interview I got up the next morning and prayed. What I realized is … she was not ready to talk. She was not forthcoming, she was still in denial.”
Winfrey and Houston spoke privately before cameras rolled, and Winfrey said that Houston is now “quite a different person.”
“She said she wanted to tell her story,” Winfrey said. “She wanted to tell the truth. …She gave it up. She talked about difficulty in her marriage [to Bobby Brown], how that started. She talked about the drugs, she talked about what drugs she was doing. …There wasn’t a question I asked that she didn’t answer.”
During the interview, Houston spoke about a time when her mother came to her home with the police to conduct an intervention and get Houston out of the house and off drugs.
“Now looking at it, I see the love and passion that my mother had for me,” she told Winfrey. “She came and said, ‘It’s not worth it.’ She said, “If you move, Bobby, they’re gonna take you down. Don’t you make one move.’ And he stood there like, he was scared. And she said, ‘Let’s go.’ She said, ‘Let’s do this.’ She said, ‘I’m not losing you to the world. I’m not losing you to Satan. I’m not doing this. I want my daughter. I want you back. I want to see that glow in your eyes. That light in your eye.’“
Winfrey said, “I think it’s because of her strong faith in God and the support of her family that she made it through.”
