Oprah Winfrey spoke about GLP1s, self-doubt and manifesting a ‘purposeful life’ at her first-ever live Dublin appearance in the 3Arena on Monday night
After Air Force one had cleared off over the weekend, it was time for the real version of American royalty to roll into town.
To be fair, if you’re going to receive an inspirational lecture of some 90 minutes about self-optimisation, it may as well be from Oprah Winfrey. Born into grinding poverty in Mississippi, Winfrey endured strict discipline, trauma, bullying and sexual abuse, eventually giving birth at 14 (her son Canaan, born prematurely, died shortly after birth).
At 17, she put the wheels in motion for a media career at WWOL, a local black radio station. Now, at 72, she was named the greatest living self-made American by Forbes magazine this year. A fame so powerful that her first name will do in most situations.
And the Church of O has gathered a large, well-heeled, mostly female after-work crowd to the 3Arena. Excitement seems airborne in the area. The bar next door, enjoying a Monday evening bounce, is forced to serve wine out of beer glasses.
This is a crowd keen to get up close and personal with the one-woman media powerhouse. Will we learn anything new? Will we come away brimful of useful girl-boss wisdom? Will everyone get a car? With some tickets for this event selling at €395, some might hope so.
It’s hard to create an illusion of intimacy in a venue with a capacity of nearly 10,000, but Winfrey, along with her interviewer David Meade, makes a decent attempt at it.
Flanked by photos of herself throughout her life, Oprah delivers what is essentially an inspirational talk in which the embroidered cushion slogans come in waves: “I’m betting on me”. “Do the best you can in any given moment”. “How do you live a purposeful life?” “Everything is happening for you and not to you.” “I used to have the disease to please.” A woman next to me nods her head vigorously at every single one. This is, I soon come to realise, exactly what this crowd have paid to hear. Coming from Oprah, these are not Pinterest slogans, but pearls of wisdom to be cherished.
Of course, no visit from an incoming dignitary would be complete without at least one reference to Guinness. Sure enough, Oprah, on her very first visit to Ireland, has been supping the stuff in Doheny & Nesbitt with – to give the woman her full name – ‘my best friend Gayle’ [King]. “We and Guinness don’t get along too well,” she admits. “I think you must have an acquired taste for it, right? It takes a minute.”
Oprah reveals that she also met two ‘kids’ outside her Dublin hotel, Glenn and Ben. So charming were they that she is going to write them into her gratitude journal later. “Let me tell you, your life will shift immediately, in seven to ten days, if you start a gratitude journal,” Oprah intones.
There has also been plenty of local hiking for Oprah and Gail, some around Bull Wall in Dublin. “It used to be our family vacations and family holidays were all about food, food, food,” Oprah reveals. “What are we eating? What are we eating? What do we next? What is the next meal? And now it’s where are we going to hike?”
There is a momentary nod towards Oprah’s use of GLP1s, and she jokes that some people might be in attendance tonight simply to see if she lost weight.
“The GLP1 changed it for me,” Oprah reveals. “I was reluctant to get on the GLP1s until 2023 because I was determined I had to do it myself.”
Elsewhere, Oprah explains that the chances of us being us – “that sperm hitting that egg in exactly that moment” – is around one in 400 trillion. It makes us all supremely special, she notes. Some more so than others; Oprah’s parents, she reveals, never married and had sex precisely once.
In the end, an evening with Oprah is certainly edifying and inspiring. Manifesting, overcoming self-doubt, honouring one’s purpose, rising in one’s life – it’s all here. Amid this polished, practised lecture, there is little room for candidacy, although there are the occasional moments of vulnerability (we do learn that only a week prior, Oprah had to put her 17-year-old spaniel Sadie to rest). Her retelling of being cast by Steven Spielberg in her favourite film, The Color Purple, without a shred of acting experience, is also a high point.
Do we feel as though we might know Oprah Winfrey a little better? Did we really get to see the human being behind the media mogul? Did the evening carry the frenetic, joyous energy that her TV show was once famed for? Not entirely.
But in terms of delivering what the crowd came for – a choreographed speech full of life smarts that they can take on in life – it is a job well done. In the end, the smattering of stardust is (just about) worth the price of admission.