Oprah Winfrey broke down in tears describing her friendship with Gayle King, according to a clip from A Barbara Walters Special: Oprah, The Next Chapter shown on Good Morning America Wednesday. (The special airs Thursday on ABC.)
“She is … the mother I never had. She is … the sister everybody would want. She is the friend that everybody deserves. I don’t know a better person. I don’t know a better person,” said Winfrey, who has long faced rumors that her relationship with King is sexual. VIDEO: Oprah and Gayle joke about their relationship.
“It’s making me cry because I’m thinking about … how much … I probably have never told her that. Tissue please. I now need tissue. I’ve never told her that,” she cried.
Added Winfrey, who met King when they both worked on a Baltimore TV station in the 1980s: “I’m not a lesbian … I’m not even kind of a lesbian. And the reason why it irritates me is because it means that somebody must think I’m lying. That’s number one. Number two … why would you want to hide it? That is not the way I run my life.”
Winfrey has been giving emotional interviews ahead of the Jan. 1 launch of her TV network, OWN.
“I have never felt such fear in all my life … I was afraid of failing … I was afraid it wouldn’t be what The Oprah Winfrey Show has been, and has meant, for all these years,” she wrote in the January issue of her magazine, O. “What I realized is that I’ve never been afraid before. Not with any decision I’ve ever made.”
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