Oprah reveals her biggest interview regret: Asking Sally Field about Burt Reynolds’ toupee

Oprah Winfrey has revealed the one interview question she regrets to this day, recalling how it made a well-known actress turn “cold”.

Oprah Winfrey has recalled the one moment from her decades of interviewing celebrities that still makes her cringe.

The 67-year-old television icon has interviewed almost every celebrity and major public figure in her long career in show business.

Most recently, she made headlines for explosive tell-all interviews with people like Elliot Page as well as Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.

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Oprah Winfrey recalled the interview that still makes her cringe to this day. Picture: Getty Images.

However, speaking as a guest on Rob Lowe’s Literally podcast this week, Winfrey revealed there is one interview in which she feels she really dropped the ball, noting that the memory still haunts her.

Oprah told her story after Lowe lamented the fact that late-night talk show hosts today focus too much on getting stars to play fun, silly games rather than getting to know them or their craft.

He used the late Burt Reynolds as an example of someone fascinating that late-night hosts could get to know, prompting Winfrey to chime in with her own story about the man.

“Oh, Burt Reynolds!” she interjected (via E! News). “Oh, gosh! I have a Burt Reynolds story.”

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The US TV talk show queen said she couldn’t recover from the awkward question. Picture: (AP Photo/Reed Saxon

That’s when she launched into a story about interviewing Reynolds’ Smokey and the Bandit co-star and real-life girlfriend at the time, Sally Field.

Winfrey noted that she was pressured to ask a question that she now considers one of her career’s earliest and greatest flubs.

“My big mistake: I asked her, ‘Does Burt sleep with his toupee on?’” the OWN mogul explained to her shocked host.

“I even say now, I cringe to even think that I asked that question. But I asked it because the producers are like, ‘You have to ask, you have to ask, you have to ask. That’s what everybody wants to know’.”

Winfrey added: “And so I asked it, and she went cold on me. She shut down, and I could not get in again.”

Burt Reynolds and Sally Field. Picture: Supplied.

Lowe, who had his own experience working with Field on the 2006 ABC drama Brothers & Sisters, noted that he’s familiar with the otherwise “amazing” celebrity’s cold shoulder.

“She‘s one of the most amazing actors I’ve ever known, but when Sally goes cold, it’s like Khrushchev in the Cold War,” he joked.

“She will bury you.”

Winfrey made sure to note that no one should be upset at Field over the awkward TV moment.

She admits that she takes full responsibility for asking an “inappropriate question” and concluded that she ”deserved” every bit of Field’s coldness on the day.

This article originally appeared on Fox News and is reproduced here with permission.