14 DAY TRIAL // Oprah Winfrey is addressing the recent controversy created by her telling the press that she was denied service in a handbag boutique in Switzerland because she’s black, apologizing for mentioning it but pretty much stressing she stands by her initial story.
It all happened before Tina Turner’s wedding, when the Queen of Television went into a boutique to buy a handbag that would match the dress she’d picked for the occasion.
In a recent interview, Oprah says she asked to be shown a particular item but was turned down because it was “too expensive” for her. The bag cost approximately $40,000 (€30,138).
As we also informed you at the time, she noted that she wasn’t in full Oprah mode when this happened, so the shop assistant assumed that, because she was black, she couldn’t afford to buy that particular bag.
She’s now telling the BBC that she should have never mentioned that the incident occurred in Switzerland.
“I think that incident in Switzerland was just an incident in Switzerland… I’m really sorry that it got blown up. I purposefully did not mention the name of the store. I’m sorry that I said it was Switzerland…. It’s not an indictment against the country, or even that store. It’s just one person who didn’t want to offer me the opportunity to see the bag,” Oprah explains.
However, she maintains she was accurate in thinking the shop assistant refused to oblige her on racial grounds.
“I was just referencing it as an example of being in a place where people don’t expect that you would be able to be there,” she says.
“Nobody’s gonna call me the N-word to my face unless they’re a thug on Twitter or Facebook. It doesn’t show up that way. It shows up for me differently: I’m in a store… and they make an assessment based upon the way I look and who I am,” Oprah continues.
As for the other side of the story, the shop assistant claims the only reason she didn’t want to show Oprah the very expensive bag was because she was looking at a similar one in her hand – just much cheaper.