The giant-slayer enters the room on little cat feet. She sits down daintily, her red jacket and white T-shirt impeccable. She's petite. Her blond hair is blown out to perfection, though she frequently reaches up to make sure, smoothing the already-smooth tendrils that frame her face (which, for a 68-year-old, is markedly unlined). Her jewellery is substantial, including gold earrings and a sizable sapphire ring on her wedding finger. Introduced to me and a photographer once, she instantly remembers both our names, and uses them effortlessly and often. During a 45-minute interview in Toronto, she speaks her thoughtful sentences softly, girlishly, almost cooing at times. She tilts her head down, looks up through her lashes. Her tone is friendly, confiding.
But ask Kitty Kelley a question she doesn't like, and things change. She sits up, leans forward. She locks her eyes on mine. Her voice gets louder, stiffens into steel. It's like watching a viper spring from the mouth of a sweet little lamb.
If Kelley is feeling defensive, she probably has her reasons. She is the reigning queen of the unauthorized celebrity bio, and her previous books were crammed with her trademark brand of anecdote - illuminating, frequently unattributed, personal - including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's psychotherapy, Frank Sinatra's ties to organized crime, Nancy Reagan's dope smoking or George W. Bush's snorting cocaine at Camp David during his father's presidency. Her latest book, Oprah: A Biography, a 500-page examination of Oprah Winfrey, the talk-show host, entrepreneur and icon offers more of the same. Already, it's a sensation, much reviewed, dissected and debated.
"I believe firmly in the unauthorized biography," Kelley says. "I'm old school. I started at the Washington Post editorial page as a researcher, and that's when I met journalists who didn't bow to celebrity. I write about people who've left a footprint on the landscape. They're not there to give you control over what they have so carefully manufactured, the myth they've put forward."
When I ask if it's possible to write an authorized biography that's equally honest, I get my first viper bite. "I'm sure it's possible," Kelley says, immediately irked, "but tell me, who would that be? Would it be Frank Sinatra? Oprah Winfrey? Maybe you're thinking of Queen Elizabeth. I mean, come on, get real. You're saying [mincing voice] 'Can't you do an authorized version?' I want to tell you, be my guest." The viper disappears as quickly as it came, though; a moment later her tone is calm again.
As lofty and seemingly untouchable as her previous subjects were, Kelley maintains that Winfrey is an order of magnitude more difficult to write about and promote. Though Kelley's previous books were bestsellers, several publishers shied away from the book, "because she's a heroine in publishing, and they were afraid she'd retaliate, and they'd never get another author on her book club," Kelley says. Many of the hundreds of classmates, colleagues, friends and fellow celebrities that Kelley approached during her four years of research and writing declined to participate - some because Winfrey is beloved, Kelley says, and others because she is feared.
And many media stars who'd invited Kelley to promote her previous books have not done so this time - including Barbara Walters and Larry King - "because they wanted to preserve their relationship with Oprah," Kelley says. "When my publisher told my [second]husband John and me about Larry King - whose show I've only done about 400 times - John said, 'Well, honey, this is what you worked so hard for.' Ha! I just did the TV show The Insider, and they told me, 'We haven't interviewed you until now out of respect to Oprah. But now that she's commented on your book, we can.' It's like we live in a monarchy."
The book contains a few revelations. (Winfrey once had an affair with John Tesh, the former co-host of Entertainment Tonight? Yowsa.)
But most pale in comparison to the stuff Oprah has already admitted about herself. Born poor in rural Mississippi, she rose to be the world's richest woman without benefit of marriage or inheritance, with a personal worth around $1.5-billion (U.S.). She was sexually abused beginning at age 9, and sexually active as a teenager. At age 14, she gave birth to a baby who died a month later. She has smoked crack. She lives and gives lavishly: She paid for her best friend Gayle King's nanny. Her most precious gift, she told readers of O magazine, was not her rich voice or her remarkable stamina, but a Bentley from Tyler Perry.
But Kelley is a relentless digger and a sly writer, and eventually her details, like a thousand paper cuts, accrue until they sting. She employs a full-time researcher, who helped her create a damning chart that compares Winfrey's much-lauded charitable donations with her much higher earnings. She ends a section about Winfrey and James Frey, whose memoir of addiction and recovery, A Million Little Pieces, which Winfrey had championed, was found to contain 'fabrications,' with a nice, shaming detail: Though Winfrey excoriated Frey and his editor, Nan Talese, on her show, she still sent Talese, a thank-you note for coming. "I asked Nan if she framed it," Kelley coos to me. "But she told me she threw it away."
After 500 pages, the overall impression is this: Winfrey is charismatic, driven, protective, and not always nice - just like every other person with real power. "Yes, everybody has an on-camera persona, or company manners," Kelley says. "But Oprah isn't comparable to anyone else. She came to us as America's girlfriend. Then she became our guru. Now she's our goddess. She's telling us to live our very best lives. So, what, something is wrong with mine? She tells me what causes I should support, what politicians I should vote for, what medicines to take, what bras to wear. I want a fuller understanding of this woman whose advice I'm supposed to embrace so dearly. Plus, she made her mark getting others to tell their most painful, intimate secrets. But this woman who seems so open lives in a culture of secrecy. Anywhere you've worked, have you had to sign a confidentiality agreement? Let me tell you, cookie, if you work for Oprah, you're going to sign one."
Kelley has her own rules: "I would never write about somebody I love," she says. "Children are off limits - off limits! And mental health problems." When she's in mid-book, her life is on "total lockdown," she says. "I don't see my husband, go to movies, read good books, stay up late, hoist glasses. I'm living it constantly, because it has to be right." She has her dark nights of the soul, wondering if she's doing the right thing - "Dark days, too," she says. And her own life has been threatened, "but not around the Sinatra book, which you might expect," she says. "It was the Nancy Reagan book."
But in the end, the viper prevails. After Kelley tells me that Oprah denied her repeated requests for an interview, I ask if Kelley would participate in an unauthorized biography about herself. She rolls her eyes impatiently. "Really? Would you?" she says. "No. Why don't you just ask me how I'd feel waking up tomorrow and being 5'7"? The chances of that happening are about the same, slim and none. It would be a boring, funky mess." Somehow, I doubt that very much.
Johanna Schneller