Talk show legend Oprah Winfrey sat with Tom Freston earlier this month mulling over the latter's new memoir "Unplugged" about co-founding MTV, then spending years roving from India and Afghanistan to Timbuktu.
At the boutique bookstore Godmothers in storybook enclave Summerland, California, Winfrey and Freston talked through his metamorphosis from high-powered executive to high-wire, globe-trotting thrill seeker.
Freston wore a black blazer on a stage flanked by bookshelves and trinkets, across from Winfrey, who was draped head-to-toe in a mustard-colored ensemble. As the pair joked onstage about their first conversation, the sold-out crowd, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in rows of wooden chairs, laughed and applauded.
Oprah acknowledges role in ‘shame’ of diet culture, embraces GLP-1s in 'Enough'
The "co-Godmothers" – literary power player Jennifer Rudolph Walsh and beauty mogul Victoria Jackson – were in attendance. The bookselling duo, who coined the name Godmothers with help from Winfrey and Prince Harry, found success in Montecito's backyard at a time when independent bookstores have rebounded by 70% since 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic.
