Did you know Oprah Winfrey and Jimmy Fallon starred together in a soap opera in the 1980s?
Well, not really, but the "Tonight Show" host and "Selma" star pretended to be husband and wife in a 80s soap opera comedy sketch titled "Midnight Meadows." “Meadows” featured big hair, big shoulder pads, and auto-tuned voices.
Monday's episode marked the queen of audience gift giving's first “Tonight Show” appearance, appropriately on the day that Jimmy Fallon kicked off a week of audience gift giveaways.
“Are you familiar with giving things away?” asked Fallon. “Wonder where we got that idea.”
“I’m glad, because it made the audience happy,” Winfrey said. “I can see everybody so happy.”
Winfrey chatted with Fallon about her own excitement when she would surprise audience members during the famous “Favorite Things” segments, and how she “literally” could not sleep the night before the big car giveaway.
“I was so particular about it, I even thought the bows weren’t big enough,” said Winfrey.
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“If you are going to get a car, you need a giant bow,” Fallon joked.
Fallon also surprised Winfrey by gifting her dogs ugly Christmas sweaters.
"They are so cute!" she gushed.
Winfrey admitted that she missed doing her show, and revealed that she used to shake everyone’s hands after the show for the first 10 years on air. One day, an OB-GYN appointment forced her to skip the meet-and-greet after a taping, but made her realize that she had more energy to tape the second show of the day.
“That's when I started to spend time with the audience instead,” she said. “Everyday, after the show, I would sit with the audience and talk for 45 minutes.”
Fallon also talked with Winfrey about her new movie “Selma,” and asked the former talk show host how she became interested in acting. Oprah revealed that when she wanted to do the movie “The Color Purple,” her bosses at “The Oprah Winfrey Show” gave her two weeks off to work on the project -- which required a two-month commitment.
“I gave up all of my vacations for the entire duration of my contract in order to do the movie,” Winfrey said. “So when it came time to negotiate my contract, my lawyer said that I would never want to be in that position again, and that I should be my own boss. That’s how I ended up owning the show.”
