I Went to Oprah and All I Got Was Julia Roberts’s Favorite Things

There are certain phrases that should never be spoken casually.

“Free upgrade.”

“You’ve inherited some money.”

And, if you were an American woman watching daytime television in the 2000s:

“Favorite Things.”

Those words could make otherwise rational adults believe there might be a car waiting for them outside.

I know this because in 2011, during the final season of The Oprah Winfrey Show, I found myself sitting in Oprah’s studio while Julia Roberts announced that she was going to share some of her favorite things.

And for one brief, irrational moment, I think every one of us wondered where they had parked the mopeds.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

My Campaign to Get Into Oprah

Getting tickets to Oprah was not something I casually decided to do.

It became a project.

For roughly three months, I applied whenever the show opened up one of its audience opportunities. They weren't simply asking, “Would you like to attend Oprah?”

Of course I would like to attend Oprah. So would half of America and several people who had probably already been there.

Instead, there would be a particular show topic and some kind of question you had to answer. You submitted your response and waited to see if something about it convinced an Oprah producer that you were worthy of one of those blue audience chairs.

I tried.

I was rejected.

I tried again.

Rejected.

I tried again.

At some point this stopped being ticket requesting and became a very low-stakes personal vendetta.

This was Oprah's last season. I had watched her after school growing up. My mom watched her. I remember watching Oprah at my grandma's house on one of those days when my mom, my grandma and I were all there together.

Oprah was woven into those ordinary afternoons of my childhood—the kind that don't seem important while they're happening and somehow become important later.

So I wanted in that studio.

Then came an audience request connected to Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts and their new movie, Larry Crowne. The application asked something along the lines of why I connected with Tom Hanks.

I wrote about Splash.

That is all I am prepared to disclose.

I have never told anyone exactly what I wrote, and I see no reason to start now. Whatever deeply personal argument I made involving Tom Hanks, Daryl Hannah and a mermaid apparently worked.

I got picked.

Two tickets.

To Oprah.

In Chicago.

My mother was coming with me.

After months of electronically knocking on Oprah's door, Oprah had finally said, essentially:

Fine. Bring your mother.

We Were Going to See Oprah

Mom and I stayed at the Omni in Chicago, and the night before the taping we took a cab to a movie theater.

The audience had been invited to a private screening of Larry Crowne so we'd know what Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts were talking about the next morning.

The theater was filled with people who would be in the studio audience. We got the movie, a drink and a snack for free.

This was already going extremely well.

As for Larry Crowne itself?

It was...

fine.

I don't want to insult a movie that bought me a snack.

Let's just say that Larry Crowne is not the reason I'm still telling this story fifteen years later.

My First Lesson in Television

The next morning, Mom and I went to Harpo Studios.

And we were early.

This mattered to me.

There were only two or three people ahead of us. A woman behind us seemed particularly excited about everything, and I remember thinking we'd done this exactly right.

Early arrival.

Excellent position.

Surely this was how one secured good Oprah real estate.

Then they let us inside.

And I learned something about television.

They did not care about my line.

Soon we were all in a waiting area together. The beautiful orderly system I'd been mentally constructing outside ceased to exist. They began calling people into the studio in groups.

Once your group was called, people headed for whatever seats were available.

Mom and I ended up in the balcony.

The balcony.

I had spent three months applying for tickets, arrived early enough to practically help unlock the building, and somehow Oprah and I were now maintaining a long-distance relationship.

I was disappointed.

But it was also my first real glimpse behind the curtain of television.

The audience isn't there to have an experience that happens to be televised.

The audience is part of the television production.

Where you're placed, when you're moved, when you clap, how excited the room feels—it's all part of making the show.

Someone came out before Oprah to get us energized.

This person's job was essentially:

YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEE OPRAH. PLEASE BEGIN EXPERIENCING THE CORRECT LEVEL OF JOY.

And then suddenly—

Oprah.

Wait. That's Oprah.

There was surprisingly little ceremony to it.

She came out and started the show.

I don't remember her coming out beforehand and chatting with us or warming up the audience. She was there to make television, and television was being made.

What struck me most was the speed.

Commercial breaks on television had always seemed long enough to accomplish something. At home, a commercial break could accommodate a bathroom trip, a snack, checking something in another room and possibly beginning a small home-improvement project.

Inside the studio?

Nothing.

The commercial break began.

People moved.

Someone did something.

Oprah talked to Julia.

And—

WE'RE BACK.

Everything was unbelievably efficient.

There was no wasted movement.

No wandering around.

No Well, we've got a few minutes.

You could tell immediately that this was a show that had been produced for twenty-five years.

That machine knew exactly what it was doing.

Tom Hanks Looked at Me

Then Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts came out.

And here is where I will make a claim that cannot be independently verified:

Tom Hanks made eye contact with me.

Was I in the balcony?

Yes.

Were there hundreds of other people in the building?

Also yes.

Did Tom Hanks occasionally look upward toward the audience?

He did.

Did his eyes at some point appear to intersect geographically with the location of my face?

Absolutely.

Therefore, Tom Hanks looked at me.

It's my memory. I'm keeping it.

And honestly, Tom was the celebrity I came away liking the most that day because he seemed to acknowledge that there were actual people sitting around him. He looked into the audience. He seemed aware of the room.

Julia Roberts mostly talked with Oprah, including during the commercial breaks. I don't remember her really looking up at us.

Perhaps Tom and I simply had a deeper connection.

After all, he had already read my Splash confession.

And Then Someone Said “Favorite Things”

At some point Julia Roberts announced that she was sharing some of her favorite things.

Now.

You cannot put several hundred people inside Oprah Winfrey's studio during Oprah's final season and casually use the phrase Favorite Things.

Oprah had conditioned us.

We knew what Favorite Things meant.

Favorite Things meant screaming.

Favorite Things meant appliances.

Favorite Things meant vacations.

Favorite Things meant that at any moment Oprah might point toward the parking lot and inform everyone that basic transportation was no longer their responsibility.

So when Julia started announcing her favorites, I suspect there was a tiny portion of every person's brain making increasingly irresponsible assumptions.

We got colorful Theodora & Callum scarves.

Nice.

Melinda Maria bangles.

Very nice.

Lancôme mascara and Juicy Tubes lip gloss.

Oh, we're really doing this.

Serge Normant dry shampoo.

A Coach cosmetic case.

Bonnie's Tasty Herb Rub.

A Kathy Kaehler fitness DVD.

And a Sea-Thos Foundation tote bag.

Somewhere around the fitness DVD, I think it was reasonable to assume:

The mopeds must be outside.

There were no mopeds outside.

There was a tote bag.

And I need to emphasize that I was not disappointed.

These were genuinely nice gifts. I had walked into the building expecting nothing except the privilege of sitting considerably farther away from Oprah than originally planned, and now Julia Roberts was giving me cosmetics.

But Oprah had spent years creating an environment in which receiving a bag full of expensive free merchandise could somehow leave a microscopic portion of your brain whispering:

Yes, yes, lovely scarf. But are we going outside at any point?

Tom Hanks Saves the Men—and My Hot Chocolate

Apparently Tom Hanks looked at Julia's collection of makeup, jewelry, dry shampoo and scarves and pointed out that the men in the audience weren't exactly cleaning up.

So Tom contributed one of his own favorite things:

A Nespresso CitiZ & Milk espresso machine.

An actual appliance!

Electrical plug!

We were back in Oprah territory.

There was only one problem.

I don't drink coffee.

This did not stop me.

That machine made excellent hot chocolate.

It had this fantastic milk frother, and as far as I was concerned, Tom Hanks had given me an extremely sophisticated hot-chocolate machine whose manufacturers had inexplicably devoted most of the instruction manual to coffee.

I used that thing.

And Then It Was Over

That's probably the strangest thing I remember about being at Oprah.

How quickly the extraordinary became ordinary again.

For months I had applied.

I had waited.

I had been rejected.

I had tried again.

Then suddenly Mom and I were flying to Chicago. We were staying at the Omni. We were watching a private movie screening. We were standing outside Harpo Studios. We were sitting in Oprah's audience.

Oprah was right there.

Tom Hanks was right there.

Julia Roberts was right there.

Tom Hanks looked at me.

Again, there will be no appeals process concerning this fact.

And just as I was beginning to understand what the room felt like—

the show was over.

Suddenly we were outside.

There wasn't a long goodbye. There wasn't time to sit there soaking it all in.

Television had been made.

Thank you for coming.

Please exit the building.

And naturally, Mom and I crossed the street and went into the Oprah store.

Because apparently receiving hundreds of dollars' worth of free merchandise had not satisfied my need to commemorate the experience.

I bought an Oprah shirt.

It cost around $60.

Even now, that sentence hurts a little.

I had just received jewelry, makeup, a scarf, a Coach cosmetic bag, hair products, a fitness DVD, seasoning, a tote bag and a Nespresso machine for free, and somehow Oprah still managed to get sixty dollars out of me on my way to the sidewalk.

That woman knew business.

From Oprah to Greyhound

And then came perhaps my favorite part of the whole memory.

The next day, Mom and I got on a Greyhound bus and went to Iowa City to visit Celeste and Ellia.

There is something beautifully American about this itinerary.

Day One: Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Day Two: Greyhound bus to Iowa.

Eventually Celeste ended up with both cans of the Serge Normant dry shampoo.

Which feels appropriate.

Julia Roberts selected one of her personal beauty secrets.

Oprah's production team obtained it.

It was presented to an audience on national television.

I transported it from Chicago.

And its final destination was my sister's hair in Iowa City.

This is how celebrity culture eventually returns to earth.

What I Actually Got From Oprah

Looking back, the free things are fun to remember.

I think I still have the scarf somewhere in a drawer.

The Nespresso machine made some excellent hot chocolate.

The dry shampoo migrated to Iowa.

The fate of the herb rub has been lost to history.

But none of those things is really why that trip still matters to me.

I wanted to get into Oprah because the show had already been part of my life long before I ever saw that studio.

It was afternoons after school.

It was my mom.

It was sitting at my grandma's house.

It belonged to that era when daytime television simply existed in the background of family life, and you didn't realize that someday you'd remember not only what you watched but who was sitting in the room while you watched it.

Then the show announced its final season, and suddenly something that had always been there wasn't going to be there anymore.

So I kept applying.

And getting rejected.

And applying again.

Until one day something I wrote about Splash—which remains classified information—got my mother and me through the doors.

The actual experience wasn't quite the television fantasy I'd imagined.

We didn't get fabulous seats.

Oprah didn't come over and become our new best friend.

Julia Roberts did not gaze thoughtfully into the balcony and sense that I needed two cans of dry shampoo.

Larry Crowne did not change cinema.

And there was no moped waiting outside.

Instead I got something much more ordinary.

I got to sit beside my mom inside the television show we'd once sat together watching.

For one morning, we weren't watching Oprah after school or at Grandma's house.

We were there.

And maybe that's why I don't really mind that we ended up in the balcony.

From up there I could see the lights, the cameras, the audience, the people moving during commercial breaks, and the machinery behind something that had once seemed effortless from my living room.

I got to see how the magic worked.

Then the lights went down, the show ended, and Mom and I walked back out into Chicago carrying Julia Roberts's favorite things.

No moped.

But one extremely expensive Oprah T-shirt.

And somewhere, eventually, two cans of Julia Roberts's dry shampoo headed for Iowa on a Greyhound bus.