Oprah Winfrey, one of the most powerful women in the world, declared she would not be stripping off her lingerie to get ‘buck naked’ on screen.

The billionaire TV tsarina and occasional actress was speaking to me about her role in director Lee Daniels’s movie The Butler, in which she plays Gloria, wife of a White House butler played by Forest Whitaker. 

Gloria becomes bored with her middle-class life while her husband’s off looking after ‘that other family in the White House’.

Oprah said that after a while Gloria starts to drink, and fools around with a neighbour, played by Terrence Howard.

She said Daniels would have preferred her to go much further during her scenes with Howard. ‘You know, he would have had me buck naked on that sofa if I had let him!’

She added that she and Daniels argued ferociously about how Gloria would behave. ‘He did more screaming than I did — I’m not a screamer,’ she said.

She insisted it would make no sense for Gloria to go to bed with Howard. ‘If she’s going to roll around in bed in the middle of the afternoon,’ she explained, then it would be ‘a lie, a fake thing’.

The infuriating fact about Oprah Winfrey is that she has a day job that takes her away from acting.

It’s 15 years since she did Beloved; and 27 years since The Color Purple.

She provides the heat in The Butler in more ways than one.

Not only does she look terrific, but she nails the character completely: she’s a force of nature on screen.

The movie spans several decades, and I wondered aloud whether America has paid that promissory note to African-Americans that Martin Luther King talked about in his I Have A Dream speech. 

Oprah believes it has. ‘I think that every day, each of us is allowed to be judged by the content of their character,’ she said.

Forest Whittaker and Oprah Winfrey, with director Lee Daniels (right), during a photocall for their new film The Butler, at the Corinthia Hotel in London

 

She also noted how much African-Americans have accomplished since King’s oration. Once upon a time, she said, they had to sit at the back of the bus. ‘Now we could buy the bus.’

Oprah observed that five decades ago: ‘I would not have been allowed to be Oprah Winfrey. “How dare I!” I certainly wouldn’t have been allowed to have owned my own television network,’ she laughed, delighted by her own audacity, her gold bangles jangling.

I risk a joke, asking if she is allowed to buy handbags now — a reference to the infamous episode in Zurich where an assistant in a posh store didn’t let her see an expensive bag, because she didn’t think she could afford it.

‘I don’t think I’m going to have a problem buying a handbag in London,’ she said, matter-of-factly.

And then she hitched up her Donna Karan ensemble, and helped me retrieve my tape recorder, which had been strategically placed next to her Yves St Laurent-shod feet.

Oprah has people at her offices and her various homes to pick up after her, so I was flattered that she could be bothered to do some light lifting for me.