Whitney Houston fell off the stage and begged the audience not to leak

Oprah Winfrey turned her Cannes Lions appearance into a call for creators to use their platforms for good. She spoke with festival chairman Phil Thomas about philanthropy, legacy and her unlikely path from rural Mississippi to one of the most powerful self-made figures in media.

At the Lumière Theater, where she received the festival’s LionHeart Award, Winfrey used the stage to meditate on purpose and responsibility before an audience made up of figures from the advertising, media and creator economies. She also reflected on the school she built in South Africa, her friendship with Maya Angelou, her childhood in Mississippi and her memorable interview with the late Whitney Houston on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

“We did the whole, ‘Hey girl, how you doing?’ greeting and then I stopped the cameras and went behind the stage and said, ‘Tell me, what do you want to happen here? And I’m going to tell you what I want to happen here,” Winfrey said. And that was one of the most powerful interviews.”

She said Houston later returned to the show to perform and had relapsed into her addiction. “I had so much trust from the audience of ‘The Oprah Show’… I think so [Houston’s] last show with us, and she had gone back on drugs,” Winfrey said. “The first interview I did with her when we went backstage and I asked her about her intentions, she was clean, but the day she came to my show to perform for the audience, she wasn’t and she fell off the stage.”

Winfrey said she knew the moment could have been devastating if it became public. “I knew if that story got out, it would destroy her,” Winfrey said. “And even though the audience was there and the audience had cameras, I begged them not to release those pictures because it would ruin her life, and they didn’t. That wouldn’t happen today, I can tell you that,” Winfrey added. Houston died in February 2012 at the age of 48 after an accidental drowning.

Elsewhere in the conversation, Winfrey appealed to creators’ sense of responsibility and emphasized that influence comes with obligations.

“What you do is not just about making money and creating influence for yourself… it’s an additional aspect of life,” she said. “But you have a greater calling in life… Your greater job here on this planet is to be the best human being you can be, not the best creator, not the best talk show host, not the best podcaster, but how do you evolve into the creation that you are meant to be?”

Much of the conversation focused on the origins of her philanthropy and the personal experiences that shaped it. When asked how she decides who to help and how to help them, Winfrey traced the impulse back to her own childhood, remembering a Christmas when her family had nothing and nuns arrived at the house with presents.

“It wasn’t the gift, it was the fact that they showed up,” Winfrey said. “They showed up and let a 12-year-old girl know that I mattered.” The desire to give other children the same feeling of being seen prompted her decision to establish the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa.

“So whatever disadvantages you’ve had in your life, the reason you had those disadvantages is not because the universe or the life force is trying to punish you, but because it’s trying to grow you to the next level,” Winfrey said. “It’s trying to teach you something. So when challenges come into your life, and I’ve said this to all my listeners over the years, the challenge is not there to just mess with your mind, to confuse you, the challenge is there to say, ‘What is this here to teach me so that I can grow to the next level?'”

She said her own background made the work in South Africa feel intensely personal. “I was a poor girl in Kosciusko, Mississippi, on a dirt road, with no running water, no electricity,” she said. “I found girls who lived in villages and lived in the same circumstances, and so I felt like I was literally mirroring my own life and giving kids who came from the same place a chance.”

Winfrey said the school had changed the trajectory of its students’ lives, citing a recent study conducted by the University of Cape Town. “What they said about what we did at this school is that we broke poverty,” she said. “And we did that. Because that was my intention. My intention was to change the trajectory of their lives.”

Winfrey also recalled a lesson from Maya Angelou, who challenged her when Winfrey told her that school would be her greatest legacy.

“She said, ‘Honey, listen to this. Your legacy is not your name on a building,'” Winfrey said. “‘Your legacy may be those girls who go on and do things in their lives. But your legacy is the same as mine and everyone else’s. Your legacy is not one thing, your legacy is every life you touch.'”

She ended the session emotionally, talking about the implausibility of her own story.

“Nobody expected anything to come from a black girl who was born out of wedlock in Mississippi in 1954, and they only had sex once! Thank God they did,” she told the crowd, prompting laughter.

“It doesn’t matter how you got here, the fact that you’re here is such a miracle,” she continued.