Though the cameras – and subsequent headlines – were trained on the interviewer and her loyal subjects during Oprah Winfrey's fire-starting tete-a-tete with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, there was a fourth, hidden presence looming over proceedings that day.
Obliquely, she was even referred to at the outset. "Before we get into it," Winfrey said to the Duchess, "I just want to make clear to everybody that, even though we're neighbours – I'm down the road, you're up the road – we're using a friend's place."
Noted, we all thought – thank you, Oprah. But who was this shy mutual friend with a beautiful, yawning garden available for hire (weddings, bar mitzvahs, tell-all interviews that hurl a grenade into the heart of 1200-year-old monarchies – it can service any need) at a moment's notice?
The mystery was short-lived. Within hours, we discovered it was CBS News anchor and Oprah's closest friend, Gayle King. And she didn't stay hidden for long, either.
The next morning, King, 66, dedicated her show to painstakingly dismembering the interview, including bringing on Oprah – armed with reels of unaired footage – for a candid post-mortem.
Covering the Sussex bombshells in depth that day was understandable, but it is King's activity since that has raised eyebrows. A staunch friend and defender of the Duchess (King attended Meghan's starry baby shower in New York in February 2019), she has morphed, without clear explanation, into what could delicately be described as "unofficial Sussex spokesperson". Or, indelicately, as "pot-stirrer-in-chief".
On Tuesday, King elected – surely with the permission of Harry and Meghan – to move the story on, announcing live on air that she had spoken to the couple and there was An Update.
"Well, I'm not trying to break news," King demurred, as breaking news music played in the background and the words "MEGHAN & HARRY INTERVIEW FALLOUT" flashed up, "but I did actually call them to see how they were feeling, and it's true, Harry has talked to his brother, and he has talked to his father, too. The word I was given was that those conversations were 'not productive'…"
Given the Sussexes' probable complicity, it was less of a journalistic scoop and more like a friend marching across the playground to pass a message on behalf of the popular girl. Piers Morgan, who isn't exactly a neutral figure, tweeted King:
Hi @GayleKing - rather than acting as your Sussex friends’ PR mouthpiece to facilitate their ongoing public trashing of our Royal Family, how about doing your job as a journalist and ask them about all the lies they told in @Oprah’s interview?
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) March 17, 2021
America should hear THE truth.
Next, the Cambridges responded – or, at least, "a source close to William" told Vanity Fair – saying: "There's a lack of trust on both sides, which makes moving forward very hard. William is now worried that anything he says to his brother will be plastered over American TV." Which is worse, we are left to assume, than plastered in the pages of Vanity Fair.
Quite what King is up to puzzles onlookers on both sides of the Atlantic. "Everyone knows if you want to get through to Oprah, it's Gayle you have to work on," a US TV source told The Telegraph.
"What's confusing people here is whether Gayle has accepted to be a mouthpiece for Meghan herself – or for Oprah. Oprah's certainly never felt the need to align herself with interviewees before, so it's not clear why she would do so now, especially with the interview done and aired."
What's never in doubt is King's fealty to friends in high places. Born in Tennessee, for a time she grew up in relative luxury (she had a swimming pool and housekeeper) while attending an American school in Turkey, where her father worked as an engineer for the US government.
Returning to the US at the age of 11, she completed a psychology degree before starting her career as a production assistant at a Baltimore TV station in the late 1970s, where Oprah, who is a year older, was a young anchor.
Despite contrasting upbringings – Oprah's mother worked as a maid, while King, she once said, "was the first black person I'd ever met who wasn't hit by her parents" – the pair clicked instantly. One night, a snowstorm forced King to stay at Oprah's home and borrow a change of outfit. They reportedly stayed up all night talking, and have remained inseparable ever since.
It is a friendship forged by both common experiences and ambitions. "We felt our value system was very much the same – our dreams were the same," Oprah told the New York Times. "Both of us grew up as black girls striving to do better in our lives."
King worked as a TV anchor in Connecticut for 18 years, but as Oprah rose to global dominance, she became known to America as "my friend Gayle". And they certainly knew her: viewers were informed about the infidelities of King's ex-husband, former Connecticut assistant attorney-general Bill Bumpus; the graphic details of the births of her two children; and, repeatedly, how much of a good pal she was.
King became a special correspondent on The Oprah Winfrey Show, got her own radio programme on Oprah Radio, and became editor-at-large and a columnist at O, The Oprah Magazine. At one point, Oprah reportedly asked King to take over her show in order to let her focus on acting, but King refused.
It may have proved a shrewd decision. After two failed talk shows of her own, King joined CBS to co-anchor the network's morning news in 2011. There, she took to the breakneck lifestyle of a glossy-but-relatable newscaster, regularly getting under four hours sleep and rising at 3.22am, posting photos of her Spanx and weight-loss progress on Instagram, and became a household name.
Even when CBS was rocked by the ousting of King's co-host, Charlie Rose, due to sexual misconduct allegations at the height of the #MeToo movement in late 2017, she managed to remain both loyal to her colleague (she and Rose are still friends) and call for full transparency of the network's findings.
In 2019, a nerveless interview with the singer R Kelly, who appeared to deny numerous charges alleging various sex crimes, saw her praised around the world. At one point, Kelly stood up, screamed and beat his chest; King, unmoved, sat like a babysitter waiting for a tantrum to burn out.
Yet despite such personal success, King's bond with Oprah is undiminished. Over the years, it has even been rumoured their relationship is romantic.
"I understand why people think we're gay," Oprah said in a 2006 issue of O magazine. "There isn't a definition in our culture for this kind of bond between women. So I get why people have to label it – how can you be this close without it being sexual? I've told nearly everything there is to tell. People think I'd be so ashamed of being gay that I wouldn't admit it? Oh, please."
Instead, blinking through tears, Oprah summed up her friend in an interview with Barbara Walters a decade ago: "She is the mother I never had, the sister everybody would want, she is the friend that everybody deserves. I don't know a better person."
Together, they now appear to have enveloped the Duke – "a grown-ass man who is in love with someone who is very unexpected", as King has said – and Duchess into their Santa Barbara circle. While Oprah attended the Royal wedding, King, who made a CBS special with suspiciously good access to Meghan's friends before the ceremony, worked at the event.
A year later, up she popped at the New York baby shower. Two years after that, she has become the Duchess's neighbour, possible facilitator of that interview and, along with all her other jobs, a one-woman PR defence team for the self-exiled Royals.
"A good time was had by all," King coyly told her colleagues on CBS after returning from the baby shower. The Duchess, she said, "is a very private person." One asked what gift she brought. "If I told you," King replied, "you know, I'd have to kill you."
Those lips seem to have become a little looser these days. There is a new kingmaker in Tinseltown, and it's "my friend Gayle".
What on earth will she let slip next?
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