Gayle King is weighing in on the recent high-profile comments made by Cindy Crawford criticizing an early interview with Oprah Winfrey.
In the first episode of the new AppleTV+ docuseries The Super Models, Crawford reflected on her very first appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986, when she was 20, and she calls out Winfrey for making her feel like a “chattel,” or like a piece of property.
King, a close friend of Winfrey’s, spoke with ET’s Rachel Smith on Thursday at the Clooney Foundation for Justice’s 2023 Albie Awards in New York City, and she explained that she’d “heard about it” but that she hasn’t yet watched the clip of the interview in question, or the new show.
“I haven’t seen it, and I want to see it, but I’m surprised and a little disappointed,” King shared. “Because I know Cindy’s been on her show many, many, many times and it has always been a pleasant experience, [so] I would hate to think that something that happened years ago [could have bothered her].”
While King reiterated that she wasn’t clear on exactly what happened in the interview, the veteran journalist said, “It’s not Oprah’s thing to humiliate or make anybody feel badly.”
“I have to see it, but, as far as I know, everything is good between Oprah and Cindy,” King added.
In the clip — which was at first taken down from Youtube amid the controversy, but subsequently reposted — Crawford, then just 20 years old, appeared alongside John Casablancas, the model’s rep at Elite Modeling Agency.
After introducing Crawford from nearby DeKalb, Illinois, Winfrey asked Casablancas, “Did she always have this body?”
Winfrey then asked Crawford to “stand up just a moment.”
“Now this is what I call a body,” said Winfrey as she put an emphasis on the word “body.”
“I was like the chattel or a child, be seen and not heard,” Crawford says in The Super Models. “When you look at it through today’s eyes, Oprah’s like, ‘Stand up and show me your body. Show us why you’re worthy of being here.’ In the moment I didn’t recognize it, and watching it back I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. That was so not OK, really.’ Especially from Oprah.”
It should be noted that Crawford would go on to make 10 more appearances on Oprah following her 1986 debut. Crawford was also a featured guest on Oprah’s Master Class, which aired on OWN in 2013.
As of yet, Winfrey has not publicly commented on Crawford’s commentary from the episode.
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