Oprah Regretted Asking Sally Field This Cringey Question About Burt Reynolds
Of all the questions Oprah Winfrey has asked over the years while sitting down with celebrities, one remains a “cringe” moment. Ahead, the question Winfrey once posed to Sally Field about Burt Reynolds, why it remains a “big mistake,” and the reaction Oprah “deserved.”
What question Oprah asked Sally Field: ‘Does Burt sleep with his toupée on?’
Speaking with actor Rob Lowe on a May 2021 episode of his Literally! podcast, Oprah opened up about the “big mistake” she once made interviewing Field.
“This is when I was younger, and I was not living from the point of view of the surrogate,” Oprah told Lowe. “But I did feel a responsibility to have to ask the questions that the viewer wanted. Sally Field was on, my big mistake, I asked her, ‘Does Burt sleep with his toupée on?'”
“I cringe to even think that I asked that question,” the now-69-year-old continued. “But I asked it because the producers are like, ‘You have to ask, you have to ask, you have to ask. That’s what everybody wants to know.’”
Sally Field ‘shut down’ on Oprah Winfrey after the Burt Reynolds question
As for how Field responded to Winfrey’s question, she immediately “shut down.”
“She went cold on me. She shut down, and I could not get in again,” Oprah said of Field, admitting the 80 for Brady star’s reaction surprised her. “It was like, ‘Whoa, Sally went cold on me on live TV.”
Lowe, who co-starred with Field on the TV series Brothers And Sisters, noted that’s pretty much it when she “goes cold.”
“She’s one of the most amazing actors I’ve ever known,” the Parks and Recreation alum told Oprah, “but when Sally goes cold, it’s like Khrushchev in the Cold War. It’ll bury you.”
However, Oprah quickly added that she’d “deserved” the response she got at the time. “I deserved it, I deserved it, I deserved it, because that is such an inappropriate question,” she said.
As for whether or not Field answered the question, which Lowe confessed he wanted to know the answer to, Oprah shared the Hello, My Name Is Doris star never did.
Oprah Winfrey ‘wouldn’t’ ask the ‘awful question’ about Burt Reynolds now
The Reynolds toupée line of questioning wouldn’t fly with Winfrey these days, Oprah told Today in 2005. Asked if she’d ever “cross[ed] the line” in her career, she cited what she asked Field as an example.
“Sally Field used to date Burt Reynolds, and I asked this awful question. It was a bad question. I wouldn’t do it today,” Oprah said, calling it “worse” than a question about sex.
Since Oprah’s “cringe” moment with Field, the two have sat down together for multiple on-screen chats. In 2008, Winfrey interviewed Field for Oprah Magazine and even asked her about Reynolds, just not in the same way as years before. This time around, Oprah asked Field what she learned about herself from the relationship. Four years later, in 2012, Field appeared on Oprah’s Next Chapter.
