The Whitney Houston estate is refuting Oprah Winfrey recalling that the late singer was high and fell off the stage during an appearance on her talk show.
“From the 2009 interview on the Oprah Winfrey show, Whitney absolutely fell off stage, but it was during a sound check and it was due to the darkness of the area and her unfamiliarity with the stage,” reads a statement posted on the official Houston Instagram page. “She was absolutely not high.”
During a conversation at Cannes Lion, Winfrey claimed that Houston was relapsing when arrived to perform on what would be her last appearance on the show. “She fell off of the stage,” Winfrey said.
Winfrey asked camera-wielding audience members not to release any photos they may have captured of the incident. “I knew that if that story got out … she would be destroyed by that,” Winfrey said. “And so even though the audience was there and the audience had cameras, I begged them not to put those pictures out because it would ruin her life, and they did not.”
The Houston estate acknowledged that the Grammy winner “faced personal battles, but it is inaccurate and unfair to attach that struggle to every performance or every chapter of her life.
