Oprah Winfrey Finally Opens Up About Her Alleged ‘Secret Son'

While leaving a taping of The Late Show earlier this month, Oprah Winfrey was “ambushed” by a man named Calvin Mitchell who claimed to be her “secret son.” In an interview with Radar Online, Mitchell said Winfrey “tried to adopt him as a boy, but then abandoned him as a teen,” which sent him “spiraling into a deep depression.”

Winfrey has finally spoken out about Mitchell’s allegations, and, surprisingly, revealed that much of what he claimed is true. She also filled in a few of the details he left out.

Winfrey told Entertainment Tonight:

“I met Calvin around the early ‘90s, I think it was 1992...I was doing a film for television called There Are No Children Here. We were shooting in the projects in Chicago and I was sitting on set during a break, and this cute little sparkly-eyed boy came underneath the yellow tape to hand me a soda.”


“I was so charmed by him that I started talking to him about his family, his school life, and found out that he was in a situation where his mother didn’t have a job and they were stuck in the projects.”

Winfrey and Stedman (awww, Stedman!!) eventually “paid for Mitchell to enroll in a local private school and found employment for Mitchell’s mother,” but he dropped out “after a brief stint.”
She claims she asked for Mitchell’s number after he approached her this month, but then found out the whole thing was a stunt set up by The National Enquirer.

“When I realized the whole thing was a setup, I was no longer interested in speaking to him.”

[Us Weekly]