Oprah Is Promoting Herself More Than 'The Butler'

Unfair as it may be, as Oprah Winfrey began to earn more success in her career, she earned a reputation. Reports of the talk show host's diva behavior became rampant as The Oprah Winfrey Show collected gangbusters ratings, despite her lovable on-screen persona. And, with Winfrey largely off the air in recent years as she tried to make her network, OWN, a success, it's been easy to forget the talk show host's small screen nature, especially when her show ended in 2011 as people continued talking about some of the more unflattering revelations (bad temper, manipulation, a distant relationship with her own mother, etc.) written in Kitty Kelley's 2010 biography, Oprah.

But, thanks to Lee Daniels' The Butler — which marks Winfrey's first high-profile acting stint in 15 years — Winfrey is getting the opportunity to remind us just how much we liked her thanks to the press rounds. And Winfrey is performing so well on various programs, it makes you wonder whether this press tour is for The Butler after all.

Winfrey's latest stop was on Watch What Happens Live, where host Andy Cohen persuaded the host to yell his name in her patented Winfrey fashion. And her willingness to poke fun at herself with a trivia game about herself only made us more pleased to see a Winfrey comeback on the horizon. After all, the talk show host has more to promote than just The Butler — Winfrey is sitting down with Lindsay Lohan for an Aug. 18 interview, and OWN will host the troubled actress' eight-part documentary series as well.

Winfrey so wants people to tune in that she was willing to discuss OWN's struggles to Cohen, an interviewer typically more adept at talking about tequila with burnt-out housewives. According to Winfrey, she was surprised to see OWN's ratings struggles in its early life: "All these years I’ve been telling people to hang in there, to hold on to their dreams, be steadfast in their vision … and I went, ‘Oh, now I get to walk that walk, and not just talk it.'"

And then she slapped Cohen. (Sort of.) Tell us why we haven't been watching OWN all this time?