By Olivia Craighead, a news writer for the Cut who covers pop culture and celebrity. Previously, she wrote about pop culture and entertainment at Gawker. 
Photo: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images
Oprah Winfrey is coming back to TV, but unfortunately it’s for one night only. Variety reports that the media mogul has a new special about Ozempic and the recent wave of weight-loss drugs coming to ABC later this month. Filmed in front of a live studio audience, An Oprah Special: Shame, Blame and the Weight Loss Revolution will dive headfirst into all things semaglutide.
“It is a very personal topic for me and for the hundreds of millions of people impacted around the globe who have for years struggled with weight and obesity,” Oprah said in a statement. Last December, the former TV host revealed that she had been taking weight-loss medication, although she declined to name which one. At the time, she said that the prevalence of drugs like Ozempic “feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for.”
“This special will bring together medical experts, leaders in the space, and people in the day-to-day struggle to talk about health equity and obesity with the intention to ultimately release the shame, judgment, and stigma surrounding weight,” Oprah continued in her statement. It’s not immediately clear if any Ozempic skeptics (Ozemptics, if I may) will be there, or if Winfrey will go unchallenged in her support of these drugs.
The announcement comes just a week after Oprah said she was parting ways with Weight Watchers, as she stepped down from the company’s board after nine years. She donated her shares of the company to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, in part to “eliminate any perceived conflict of interest around her taking weight-loss medications.”
Does something about this — a monthslong campaign advocating for weight-loss medication while also extricating herself from the weight-loss company she was the face of — feel … interesting? I’m just saying, don’t be surprised if the “O” in Ozempic stands for Oprah in a few months. At bare minimum, it won’t be shocking if it comes out that Winfrey is now a minority shareholder in Novo Nordisk, the company that makes Ozempic.
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