Oprah Winfrey Reveals the Problem That Nearly Derailed Her Famous Golden Globes Speech
Oprah Winfrey’s powerful Golden Globes speech has quickly become one of the most memorable moments of her career — but it turns out the talk show host had difficulty delivering her message.
That’s because for the first time in her decades of talking on television, Winfrey got a bad case of dry mouth.
“I must have been more nervous than I thought, because I’ve never had dry mouth before,” Winfrey reveals in an upcoming interview with PEOPLE.
“In the middle of the speech I thought, ‘I can’t move my gums,'” she adds, mimicking the way she thought her voice sounded at the time.
For more about Oprah Winfrey, be sure to check out next week’s issue of PEOPLE.
But the unfortunate dry mouth might have actually added to the forcefulness of her speech. “I started to articulate because I was trying to get over my gums,” she explains.
Winfrey delivered the now-famous speech while accepting the 2018 Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, an honorary award bestowed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment.
Winfrey’s speech was filled with somber moments, standing ovations, past memories and the story of Recy Taylor, a Black woman who never received justice after being abducted and gang-raped by six white men in Alabama.
The speech was met with several standing ovations, with the crowd erupting in a boisterous applause when Winfrey assured sexual predators that their “time is up.”
Winfrey next stars in A Wrinkle in Time, out in theaters March 9.
