O Magazine Interview
Traynor talks about her musical Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark:
When we started, only the first movie had come out. This was right after 9/11, so all of that was on our minds. But the fact is, our idea came out of the Arachne story. In our version, she falls in love with her protégé, Spider-Man—who, at the top of act 2, starts becoming world famous. Suddenly there are Spider-Man hot dogs, hero sandwiches, underwear—everything. And he no longer has time for his girlfriend or his aunt.
O Magazine Interview
Perry discusses the first time he portrayed the role of Madea on stage:
There was a sold-out house at the Regal Theater in Chicago, and five minutes before the show, I put on the costume and stood at the mirror for the first time. I’m saying, Damn, are you really going to do this? Then the show started and I had no choice—they pushed me out onstage. Madea had a cane and she didn’t talk very loud and her voice was much deeper and she sat in one spot the whole time. But after a while, I finally had to move. And when I moved there was laughter.
O Magazine Interview
Hanh gives his thoughts on being exiled from his home country of Vietnam for 39 years after going to speak at Cornell University in 1966:
Angry, worried, sad, hurt. The practice of mindfulness helped me recognize that. In the first year, I dreamed almost every night of going home. I was climbing a beautiful hill, very green, very happily, and suddenly I woke up and found that I was in exile. So my practice was to get in touch with the trees, the birds, the flowers, the children, the people in the West—and make them my community.
O Magazine Interview
DeGeneres talks about the work that goes in to her talk show Ellen:
It’s a lot of work to put a brand-new monologue and a brand-new show on the air and find comedy every single day. It’s challenging and it’s the hardest thing I have ever done, but it’s the best-suited thing for me. The more relaxed I get and the more confident I feel, the more I get to play and be myself and say whatever I feel like saying and not worry about whether I’m being a good interviewer. Although sometimes, I admit, you’re talking to people and you’re like, Oh please, have something to say! But in general I’m just more and more confident that if I’m myself, people are going to enjoy it more.
O Magazine interview
Jay-Z gives his thoughts about why his first album, Reasonable Doubt played a pivotal part in boosting his hip-hop career:
Yes—and that first album, Reasonable Doubt, is my favorite, because all the emotions and experiences of 26 years came out in it. That was the record I had 26 years to make.
O Magazine interview
Edwards gives an interview to Oprah for O Magazine. She talks about receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis from her doctors.
I Cry[ed]. I admit it. We were sitting in a little room in the hospital, and it was hard not to break down. But then we said we’re going to keep pushing. You can fight for yourself or you can just throw your hands up and say, Okay, I’m through. I’ll just wait to die.
O Magazine interview
Edwards talks about her reaction when she found out she had terminal cancer:
Cry. I admit it. We were sitting in a little room in the hospital, and it was hard not to break down. But then we said we’re going to keep pushing. You can fight for yourself or you can just throw your hands up and say, Okay, I’m through. I’ll just wait to die.
O Magazine interview
First Lady Michelle Obama gives an interview to Oprah for O Magazine about her first week in the White House.
Well, we still had family here, so it was almost like a wedding. A huge, very complicated wedding. The last visitors didn’t leave until Sunday. And then the first Monday was kind of weird. You know: Now we live here, and Barack is getting up and going to work, and it’s just us. This is our home now. But the kids didn’t act any differently.
O Magazine interview
Fey gives an interview to Oprah for O Magazine about her impersonation of Sarah Palin on SNL.
No. I just kept thinking, I don’t work here anymore, so if this ends up being lousy, I told you guys I don’t do this. I also felt safe doing it with Amy [Amy Poehler played both Hillary Clinton and Katie Couric in the SNL sketches]. I wouldn’t have enjoyed doing it alone, because I never did anything alone on SNL.
O Magazine Interview
Fey discusses getting the call to impersonate Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live:
Lorne played it cool, as he always does, and waited until the week of the first show. He called and said, Think about if you want to impersonate her. I was like, I’ll do a joke about her. I’ll do a sketch where I’m myself. I’ll do anything except impersonate her!
O Magazine interview
Pink gives an interview to Oprah for O Magazine about his book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.
In many professions, what used to matter most were abilities associated with the left side of the brain: linear, sequential, spreadsheet kind of faculties. Those still matter, but they’re not enough. What’s important now are the characteristics of the brain’s right hemisphere: artistry, empathy, inventiveness, big-picture thinking. These skills have become first among equals in a whole range of business fields.
O Magazine interview
Shriver talks to Winfrey in an interview for O Magazine about making a name for herself in the world and finding her way.
I’d have to find another thing. That’s what I wrote about in the book Just Who Will You Be? I made the mistake of thinking that external accomplishments would bring me peace. I thought it was about the job or a book or making a name for myself. So many people would come up to me and say, Which Kennedy are you? At a very young age, I thought, You’re going to know which one I am. I decided that I was going to be the Kennedy who makes her own name and finds her own job and works like a dog. My comeuppance was when Arnold got elected I became the Kennedy who was married to the governor.
O Magazine Interview
Shriver speaks about being hired as an anchor for CBS Morning News:
Yes, I took the CBS job three weeks after I got engaged to Arnold, and I moved to New York to start working. I was thrilled. Those coanchor morning-show gigs were among the few on the networks that seemed locked down forever.
O Magazine interview
Chodron speaks to Winfrey in an interview for O Magazine about why she became a Buddhist priest.
I became involved in Buddhism in a way that’s very appealing to a lot of people because of the fact that their lives fall apart, and that’s what happened to me. When my second marriage broke up, it just floored me, but I had some kind of fundamental sanity that kept saying, There’s something very profound in this that will teach you something so I started looking for it. The first line of Chögyam Trungpa’s article Working with Negativity read, We all experience negativity the basic aggression of wanting things to be different than they are. Everything else was saying, Look at the positive side, and this said, Stay with your experience. That’s how it started.
O Magazine Interview
Field gives her thoughts on starring in the television show Gidget at 18 years of age:
When it aired in 1965, a season had 36 shows, which is huge. At 18 I didn’t see how the show was perceived. I barely had all my consciousness at that point, and I never read reviews or saw ratings. I had my own TV series, yet I’d never been on a plane or even been out of the state.
O Magazine Interview
Pink speaks about the influence that his book, A Whole New Mind has had on people:
Some have written that the book made them think about why they’re here. And, interestingly, a lot of students tell me that they’re going to give A Whole New Mind to their parents. One student is passionate about art, but his mom wants him to get an MBA and become an accountant.
O Magazine Interview
Chodron speaks about becoming involved in Buddhism:
I became involved in Buddhism in a way that’s very appealing to a lot of people because of the fact that their lives fall apart, and that’s what happened to me. When my second marriage broke up, it just floored me, but I had some kind of fundamental sanity that kept saying, There’s something very profound in this that will teach you something, so I started looking for it.
O Magazine interview
Washington speaks to Oprah in an interview for O Magazine about his role in The Great Debaters.
Man, it just moved me. I felt an emotional connection. What I learned while doing research for the film is that many black colleges, like Wiley and Morehouse, opened during the decade following the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. That’s because education was believed to be the way out, so when millions of black people were finally let go after almost 250 years, boom, we opened schools. And that’s partly why Melvin Tolson’s debate team was able to beat these other national teams in the ’30s: Great thinkers such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Melvin B. Tolson couldn’t teach at schools like Harvard or Columbia. But the film is really about the kids and the journey of one boy in particular.
O Magazine Interview
Washington talks about his reaction when reading the script for the movie The Great Debators:
The reaction you had in the screening room is the one I had. Man, it just moved me. I felt an emotional connection. What I learned while doing research for the film is that many black colleges, like Wiley and Morehouse, opened during the decade following the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation.
O Magazine Interview
Branson gives his thoughts on founding Virgin Airlines:
I was young and inexperienced. At first I wasn’t even allowed to register the business name because the word virgin was thought to be rude. I had to sit down and, in my best 15-year-old penmanship, write a letter to the registry office that began, Surely the word virgin is anything but rude; it’s the opposite of rude. They eventually relented.