Oprah Winfrey still thinks about a question she asked actress Sally Field. The 67-year-old media mogul appeared on the latest episode of the Literally! With Rob Lowe podcast, and revealed why her interview with 74-year-old Field still makes her “cringe.”
The interview in question, Winfrey said, took place when she “was younger” and “felt a responsibility to ask the questions the viewer wanted.”
“My big mistake: I asked her, ‘Does Burt sleep with his toupee on?'” Winfrey recalled of her interview with Field. The Burt she was referring to was Burt Reynolds, with whom Field co-starred in multiple movies, and dated for years after they met on the set of the 1997 flick Smokey and the Bandit.
“I even say now, I cringe to even think that I asked that question,” Winfrey admitted. “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.”
Lowe noted that he worked with Field for years on their drama series, Brothers and Sisters, telling Winfrey, “She’s one of the most amazing actors I’ve ever known, but when Sally goes cold, it’s like Khrushchev in the Cold War. It’ll bury you.”
“It was like, ‘Whoa, Sally went cold on me on live TV,'” Winfrey replied. “I deserved it, I deserved it, I deserved it, ’cause that is such an inappropriate question.”
“Meanwhile, I still want to know,” Lowe quipped.
“Well, she certainly didn’t answer it,” Winfrey said.
