Oprah cuts ties with '60 Minutes' after they said her name is 'too emotional'

Cape Town - Oprah Winfrey has quietly quit one of her latest TV ventures after being told she's too emotional and must "flatten" herself, saying "it's never a good thing when I have to practice saying my name and have to be told that I have too much emotion in my name". 

In a new cover story interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Oprah Winfrey who has worked as a contributor since 2017 for the American investigative and current affairs show 60 Minutes on Sunday nights, reveals that she left over creative differences. 

Besides her involvement with her OWN channel, magazine, academy in South Africa and other projects, she is now working with Apple on an upcoming series looking at mental health with people like Prince Harry, as well as a revived streaming version of her Oprah book club and possible a new streaming talk show interview series. 

About removing herself from 60 Minutes she says: "How should I say this? It's never a good thing when I have to practice saying my name and have to be told that I have too much emotion in my name… I think I did seven takes on just my name because it was 'too emotional'. I go, 'Is the too much emotion in the Oprah part or the Winfrey part?' 

"They would say, ‘All right, you need to flatten out your voice, there's too much emotion in your voice.' So, I was working on pulling myself down and flattening out my personality - which, for me, is actually not such a good thing." 

Oprah says she told 60 Minutes bosses that "I was going to be working with Apple and that it didn't mean I would never do something [for 60 Minutes anymore] but I would probably be taking all of my energies and putting them into whatever I wanted to do at Apple." 

When Oprah joined 60 Minutes in early 2017, she said "I'm so excited and proud to join forces with this historic news programme, which for me represents the bastion of journalistic storytelling. At a time when people are so divided, my intention is to bring relevant insight and perspective, to look at what separates us, and help facilitate real conversations between people from different backgrounds".