Oprah Winfrey's skills go beyond her ability to be an excellent interviewer

Slate

"Watching the interview with Twitter open, I saw numerous people describing it as a master class in interviewing," says Willa Paskin of CBS' Oprah with Harry and Meghan. "I don’t disagree, but I think it would be hard for anyone else to replicate because so much of it depends on Oprah’s special authority, her ability to effortlessly toggle between her incredible fame and something more intuitively regular. In one moment, she’s mentioning that she was at Meghan and Harry’s wedding; in another, she’s challenging Harry on his claims that he wasn’t happy as a rich princeling, as though she has no personal experience with the strictures of fame. Just before the most heart-wrenching sequence in the interview, when Meghan was describing the persistence of her suicidal thoughts and the institution’s refusal to help, Oprah asked her whether it was “what it looked like”—if she and Harry were as content as they seemed in pictures. That Oprah, who presumably has more than a little firsthand knowledge of the eternal social performance required by life in the public eye, could ask this so credulously is one thing—for it to work is Oprah’s secret sauce, her ability to be completely, potently Oprah while also plausibly channeling everyone who is not."

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• Oprah with Meghan and Harry showed that the Royal family was right to be concerned about The Crown: "Now, no matter how hard Buckingham Palace tries to micromanage the message, Winfrey’s damning interview, combined with Diana’s own words and the family’s portrayal in The Crown — and especially the Charles and Diana act in season four — show they cannot control the narrative (at least on this side of the pond)," says Alicia Shepard, adding: "It’s hard to know what parts are really true when watching The Crown, because well-told narratives have a way of embedding in our brains. But there seems to be something to it."
• Oprah had the empathy and interview skills to take on the damaging British media -- and win: "Barbara Walters could not have achieved the same result even if she was bringing her A-game," Melanie McFarland says of the interview. "Neither could Gayle King, for that matter, and this is said with the full recognition of King's sharp interviewing skills. Oprah brings this and empathy, and that's what won this part of the case. Be assured, there will be several appeals. For now the public has a better view of who Meghan and Harry are, separately and together. They may also have a more clear-eyed impression of what it means to be a royal in a time of so much social reckoning with regard to race and class."
• Oprah with Harry and Meghan is must-see for anybody who works in HR
• Jimmy Kimmel enlists his Aunt Chippy for a more honest Royal responds to the Harry-Meghan interview