With the new year Oprah Winfrey took to start a new chapter for her with new network new series and new expection to her fans. She converted her media charisma into a monogramed TV channel. Now she's the one tasked with rescuing OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, after a disappointing first year.
Fighting to turn OWN's fortune around, she says, "Yes, some mistakes were made. Who hasn't made mistakes? The real beauty is you can say, 'I learned from that,'" Winfrey said. "I don't worry about failure. I worry about, 'Did I do all I could do?'"
The original primetime series, Oprah’s Next Chapter, debuted on OWN (naturally) on Jan. 1 with a two-hour special featuring Steven Tyler…holding hands with Oprah, and walking around his beautiful lakefront home in Sunapee, New Hampshire. (And wow, nice house, Steven Tyler!)
Seeing Oprah outside the familiar studio set takes some adjusting, as does seeing Winfrey so relaxed in jeans and a sunny yellow sweater. But once she got settled into interview mode with Tyler — and I think I like the behind-the-scenes feel of seeing producers scurrying about readying cameras, etc., in moderation at least– we saw Oprah being Oprah and doing what she does best. This woman is a master interviewer. It’s easy to take for granted, but Winfrey has both an innate ability to get celebrities to open up to her, and zero hesitation over asking tough questions.
The two-hour format felt a little long, but the show will be just one hour going forward — future Oprah’s Next Chapter segments will focus on Oprah with Sean Penn in Haiti; a dinner with a Hasidic Jewish family in which none of the children had ever seen television; a trip with Deepak Chopra to India; a sleepover with Paula Deen; and a tour of Skywalker Ranch with George Lucas.
