Oprah EXITS '60 Minutes'

Oprah Winfrey revealed in an interview published Tuesday that she is no longer working as a contributor to “60 Minutes,” with the media mogul stating the work was "flattening out" her personality.

“It was not the best format for me,” Winfrey told The Hollywood Reporter.

“How should I say this? Never a good thing when I have to practice saying my name and have to be told that I have too much emotion in my name,” the 65-year-old continued. “I think I did seven takes on just my name because it was ‘too emotional.’ I go, ‘Is there too much emotion in the Oprah part or the Winfrey part?’ I was working on pulling myself down and flattening out my personality — which, for me, is actually not such a good thing.”

Winfrey was hired in January 2017 by CBS News to be a special contributor to "60 Minutes."

Winfrey, also a producer and actress, has been dubbed the "Queen of All Media" as the most successful talk show host of all time. (The Hill)

Winfrey explains: “I'm no longer doing that. I've removed myself from that, so I have only 85 jobs now. I'd actually gone to [former 60 Minutes executive producer] Jeff Fager prior to the whole CBS (pantomimes an explosion) and said I was going to be working with Apple and that it didn't mean I would never do something [with 60 Minutes] but I would probably be taking all of my energies and putting them into whatever I wanted to do at Apple. It was an interesting experience for me. I enjoyed working with the teams, and I'm probably going to work with some of the freelance people on my Apple stuff, but it was not the best format for me.”

She continues: “I think I did seven takes on just my name because it was ‘too emotional.’ I go, ‘Is the too much emotion in the 'Oprah' part or the 'Winfrey' part?’ I had a deja vu moment because I've actually lived through this once before when I covered a story as a young reporter [where] the family had lost their home and my boss told me that I reported it with too much emotion. I had too much emotion in the story. I thought, "OK, so you're not supposed to be involved in the story, I get that. You're a journalist." But the same thing is true even with a read [at 60 Minutes]. They would say, ‘All right, you need to flatten out your voice, there's too much emotion in your voice.’ So I was working on pulling myself down and flattening out my personality — which, for me, is actually not such a good thing.”