The 25th — and final — season of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” began with a bang as John Travolta danced with Winfrey while she made her entrance.
For the opener Oprah and her team promised to “knock your socks off”, and indeed they did. Winfrey surprised the 300 people in her studio audience by announcing she was taking them all on a trip to Australia. The audience shrieked when Winfrey made the statement.
The show included a few surprise visitors, including actor Don Johnson and singer Paul Simon, who sang a song he wrote for the talk show host.
This season is a big endeavor. The staff will be going through 5,000 hours of footage and have stories from 70,000 viewers to comb through from people who say the show has impacted their lives in a major way.
“This is my last chance to do something really big!!” Oprah said.
On Jan. 1 Winfrey is set to launch her Oprah Winfrey Network, or OWN, on cable. The end of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” will be featured on that network with “Behind the Scenes: Oprah’s 25th Season.”
