Whitney Houston’s estate clapped back at Oprah Winfrey in an Instagram post on Wednesday after the talk show host detailed the singer falling off the stage during a 2009 interview, categorizing the incident as a relapse in Houston’s sobriety.
“From the 2009 interview on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show,’ Whitney absolutely fell off stage, but it was during a soundcheck and it was due to the darkness of the area and her unfamiliarity with the stage,” the estate said in the statement. “She was absolutely not high.”
Winfrey, speaking at Cannes Lion on Tuesday, shared that the “Oprah Winfrey Show” interview that had Houston performing for the last time on the show in front of a studio audience hit a snag when the singer, who Winfrey said was “back on drugs,” fell off the stage.
“I knew that if that story got out that she fell off the stage that everybody would be, that she would be destroyed by that,” Winfrey recalled. “So even though the audience was there and the audience had cameras, I begged them not to put those pictures up because it would ruin her life, and they did not. That would not happen today, I can tell you that.”
Houston’s estate issued a formal response after Winfrey’s comments were “picked up by several media outlets.”
“Like many people, she faced personal battles, but it is inaccurate and unfair to attach that struggle to every performance or every chapter of her life,” the estate’s statement read. “What the studio audience witnessed on stage was the result of discipline, talent and commitment not the assumptions others project.”
The estate concluded: “Whitney’s humanity included triumphs and struggles, but on that day, she showed up as the professional and gifted artist she always worked to be. We owe her the dignity of telling the truth not repeating myths.”
Read the statement in full below, and watch the original “Oprah Winfrey Show” interview here.
