Oprah Winfrey’s ‘Secret Son’: New Details Emerge, Winfrey Breaks Silence, ‘Son’ Alleges Abandonment


Earlier this month, after filming a guest appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Oprah Winfrey was ambushed outside of the Ed Sullivan theatre by a man claiming to be her long-lost “secret son.” A “son” she allegedly abandoned years ago.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, Oprah Winfrey was leaving the set of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on October 15, after taping a guest appearance for the show, when she was surrounded by a throng of waiting fans. One of those fans was 35-year-old Calvin Mitchell, the so-called long-lost “secret son” that Oprah had allegedly abandoned nearly 20-years-ago.

Speaking to RadarOnline, Mitchell said he was confused over the whole situation. Why had Winfrey — who allegedly once attempted to adopt the boy — suddenly abandoned him?

“I want to ask Oprah, ‘Why did you leave me? Why did you leave me?’ I’m still empty. I’m still searching. I don’t have closure to this. I just don’t understand.”

Amid the tabloid media frenzy blasting Winfrey for her treatment of her “secret son,” the media mogul sat down exclusively with ET Online to give her side of the story. During the interview, she confirms that she did, in fact, know Mitchell, and that she had met him in the 1990s while filming the TV movie, There Are No Children Here. She also confirmed that Calvin was not her son by birth.

“We were shooting in the projects in Chicago and I was sitting on set during a break, and this cute little sparkly-eyed boy came underneath the yellow tape to hand me a soda. I was so charmed by him that I started talking to him about his family, his school life, and found out that he was in a situation where his mother didn’t have a job and they were stuck in the projects.”

Immediately taken with the boy and his story, Oprah explained that she helped Calvin’s family move out of the projects, found a job for his mother, and enrolled Calvin in a local private school. When the school’s principal called her to say that Calvin had not been showing up for classes, Oprah and partner Stedman visited the boy’s family. They were told that Mitchell and his family weren’t able to wake Calvin up for school on time. It was then, Oprah said, that she realized there were no clocks in the family’s home. She and Stedman, she says, then made a trip to K-Mart and bought a “bag full of clocks,” which they brought to the Mitchell family home, and taught the family how to use them.

Oprah Winfrey's 'Secret Son': New Details Emerge, Winfrey Breaks Silence, 'Son' Alleges Abandonment
[Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images]
Eventually, Oprah said, Calvin was expelled from that school. Winfrey then said she enrolled Mitchell into the prestigious Piney Woods School — a Christian-based boarding school in Mississippi — hoping that taking him out of the environment he’d grown accustomed to would ultimately help set the boy straight. At 16-years-old, Oprah says, Calvin told her he had to leave the school because “the teachers didn’t like him,” while Mitchell himself said he left because he was homesick.

“I said, ‘Calvin, this is the moment. This is a seminal moment for you. I know you are 16 and can’t see the road ahead, but if you leave this school and refuse to get an education — I have tried to offer you an education twice — there isn’t another school I can put you in. If you leave this school, I am done. There is nothing else I can do.’… And that was my last conversation with Calvin in the early ’90s.”

Winfrey said she didn’t immediately recognize her “secret son” when he approached her outside of the Ed Sullivan Theatre, but that she did try to get in touch with him after their initial run-in. She didn’t realize at first that the entire meeting was a set-up by the tabloid, The National Enquirer, and Oprah had asked one of her assistants to get Calvin’s phone number. Once the tabloid media outlets began asking her for comments on her “secret son,” Oprah said it was then that she realized the entire thing was a set-up, and no longer had any interest in speaking with Mitchell. Winfrey told Entertainment Tonight‘s Nancy O’Dell that she wasn’t hurt by the set-up, but that she was simply “disappointed.”

Winfrey cites her experience with Calvin Mitchell as the driving force behind the inspiration that led her to open her Leadership Academy for Girls in 2007.

What are your thoughts on the Oprah Winfrey “secret son” situation? Sound off below.

[Photo by Chance Yeh/Getty Images]

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