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My Lunch With Harper Lee

By Oprah Winfrey, Guardian UK

12 July 15

There are only two interviews Oprah Winfrey failed to get, and one of them was with the author of To Kill A Mockingbird. The legendary broadcaster recalls meeting her match on a rainy day in New York

t the time I read To Kill A Mockingbird, I was living with my mother in Milwaukee. I would not have had any money to buy it, so I would undoubtedly have chosen it from the library. I was one of those kids who would go to the library every two weeks, withdraw five books, read the five books, and return them. It was a librarian who said, “If you like reading that kind of book, I think you will like reading this book.”

So I picked up To Kill A Mockingbird. I remember starting it and just devouring it, not being able to get enough of it, because I fell in love with Scout. I thought I was Scout. I always took on or wanted to take on the characteristics of whoever I was reading about, and so I wanted to be Scout and I wanted a father like Atticus Finch.

I wanted to have a relationship like Scout had with Atticus, so I could call him by his first name. I wanted a nickname like Scout’s. I was drawn to the book because of that, and it wasn’t until I saw the film that I came to realise the depth of the racial implications of the book.

I remember watching the movie with my father many years after I first read the book. The impact of the movie on my father caused me to see and experience the book differently. I am right after the cusp of the civil rights movement. I wasn’t a child of the movement. I am one of those people who has been a great beneficiary of it. I don’t know what it is like to be told to go to the back door. I did not live a Jim Crow segregated life, because I was one of the fortunate ones who were able to escape Mississippi. And I do mean escape: 1960, when this book was published, was the time I was leaving Mississippi.

I left for Milwaukee and left my grandmother when I was six years old, so I never experienced the segregation of the south. I moved to an integrated school and was the smartest kid in the class, and when you are the smartest kid in the class, you always get a lot of attention. I never felt any of the oppressiveness of racism. I always recognise that life would have been so different for me had I been raised in a segregated environment – if I had to experience even secondhand what was happening in that environment.

My roots are southern. Not only was I born in the south, in Mississippi, but for a great part of my life, I was raised in Tennessee – so I identify with being a southern woman. After reading To Kill A Mockingbird, I wished I had an accent, and I would go around trying to imitate Scout. It was sickening, I guess. I scared other kids because, just like I do now, I remember reading this book and then going to class and not being able to shut up about it. I read it in eighth or ninth grade, and I was trying to push the book on other kids. So it makes sense that now I have a book club, because I have been doing that since this book. It’s one of the first books I wanted to encourage other people to read.

Like a lot of people, I get the lines blurred between the movie and the book. I have never seen a book really live its essence through a film like this one, and that is because of the casting of Scout and Atticus – all of them, really.

I once had the honour of being seated next to Gregory Peck, at a lunch held for Quincy Jones in Hollywood. I was like, “Oh my God, it is Gregory Peck. What am I going to do? What am I going to say? I am not just at the same table, but next to Gregory Peck.” It was long after I had the talkshow and I had interviewed many people, but I could not think of one thing to say. Finally I turned and I said, “So, how is Scout doing?” And he said, “Well, that was 40 years ago, but OK.” I said, “Do you ever see her?” Because in my brain, no matter what role Gregory Peck has done since then, he will always be Atticus to me, and the woman who played Scout is always Scout in my mind.

I liked Scout’s energy, her spirit – the freshness of her. I liked the fact she was so curious. Even at 10, she knew who she was and believed in herself, and was learning about this whole world of racism in such a way that I could feel myself also experiencing it— my eyes opening as hers were.

When I opened my school in South Africa, everybody wanted to know: what can we bring and what can we give the girls? I asked everybody to bring their favourite book, and I would say we probably have 100 copies of To Kill A Mockingbird. Everyone wrote their own message to the girls about why they believed this book was important, and everybody said something different.

Of course I wanted to choose it for the Oprah Winfrey book club, even though America already loves it. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be an amazing thing to have Harper Lee come on and be interviewed?” I worked on that for a couple of years, with my staff calling back and forth between her agent.

Finally, we were able to arrange a meeting, and I was so excited. I remember it was a rainy day in New York, and we were going to have lunch at the Four Seasons. I saw her walking along the street with an umbrella and boots. It was so disarming and charming I couldn’t believe it. All of that “What am I going to say? What am I going to do?” went away. We were like instant girlfriends. It was just wonderful, and I loved being with her.

I knew 20 minutes into the conversation that I would never be able to convince her to do an interview, and it is not my style to push. I decided to relax and enjoy the time I had. Because honey, she was not going to be convinced at all. She said to me: “I already said everything I needed to say. Already we have those buses coming down to my house, and they pull up to the door still looking for Boo Radley, and I just don’t want that to happen any more than it already does.” She said no, and I knew that no meant no. Sometimes no means, “Hmm, let us see what else you have to say.” But when Harper Lee said no, I knew that was the end of it. I just enjoyed the lunch.

I think now, “Why didn’t I take a tape recorder?” Because your brain is like, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, I am having lunch with Harper Lee, and I hope I remember everything, and I am trying to memorise every sentence she is saying!” Then afterwards you think, “What did she say? What did I say?”

One of the things that struck me: she said, “If I had a dime for every book that was sold…” And I was thinking, “I hope you have more than a dime, because nobody expected this.” Certainly she didn’t expect its success, and obviously the publishers didn’t expect it. More than 50 years later, we are still talking about this book.

She said to me, “You know the character Boo Radley? Well, if you know Boo, then you understand why I wouldn’t be doing an interview. Because I am really Boo.” I knew we were not going to bring Boo Radley out to sit on the Oprah show.

She will always be one of those people, like Jackie Onassis, who I also wanted to interview, who told me no – and I honour that. The way I felt about being turned down is exactly the way I felt about Onassis. In the end, I was glad she didn’t do it, that she was able to hold on to that for herself.