The media mogul regrets caving to producers’ demands to quiz legendary actress Sally Field about former lover Burt Reynolds.
She admits the decades-old question was “inappropriate” and that it’s the one mistake that continues to haunt her to this day.
“Of flubs in the world, this was when I was younger and not living from the point of view of the surrogate, but I did feel a responsibility to ask the questions people wanted [to know the answers to],” she shared. “And Sally Field was on. My big mistake: I asked her, ‘Does Burt sleep with his toupee on?'”
The Smokey and the Bandit co-stars famously dated for several years back in the late 1970s, but the relationship didn’t end well, and the two-time Oscar winner made it clear she didn’t appreciate Oprah’s line of questioning.
“I even say now, I cringe to even think that I asked that question,” the talk show legend admitted to Rob Lowe on his Literally! podcast.
“But I asked it because the producers are like, ‘You have to ask, you have to ask, you have to ask. That’s what everybody wants to know.’ And so I asked it and she went cold on me. She shut down and I could not get in again. I could not.”
Reflecting on his own experience of working with Field on TV drama series Brothers & Sisters, Rob shared: “She’s one of the most amazing actors I’ve ever known, but when Sally goes cold, it’s like [former Soviet Union leader Nikita] Khrushchev in the Cold War. She will bury you.”
Agreeing with him, Oprah said, “It was like, ‘Whoa, Sally went cold on me on live TV.’ I deserved it, I deserved it, I deserved it, ’cause that is such an inappropriate question.
“Meanwhile, I still want to know!” laughed Lowe, as Oprah replied, “She certainly didn’t answer it. And then it didn’t matter what else I said.”