Jillian Michaels speculates Oprah Winfrey is getting money from Ozempic after the former talk show host admitted to using the weight loss drug following months of speculation.
via Page Six:
“Oprah has a financial incentive with Ozempic,” the fitness instructor, 49, claims in an exclusive interview with Page Six.
“Oprah, I believe, is one of the biggest shareholders of WeightWatchers, and WeightWatchers is now in the Ozempic business,” Michaels adds, referring to when the media mogul purchased a 10 percent stake in the diet company in 2015.
“I believe [WeightWatchers] bought a company that provides access to these drugs, now there is a financial interest in these drugs. I think it’s important to put that out there right off the bat.”
Reps for Winfrey did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.
The “Color Purple” star, 69, signed on as an ambassador for WeightWatchers the same year she bought a stake in the company.
At the time, the “Oprah Winfrey Show” alum promoted the brand for helping her lose 40 pounds when she was at her heaviest — 237 pounds.
“WeightWatchers is easier than any other program I’ve ever been on. It’s a lifestyle, a way of eating, and a way of living that’s so freeing. You never feel like you are on a diet, and it works,” she previously said in a press release.
“I can honestly tell you I struggle no more. I’m eating everything I love — tacos, pasta. I’ve never felt deprived.”
According to Inc.com, the weight loss company is now expanding its horizons to provide “doctor-led access to prescription medication,” including the Type 2 diabetes medication Ozempic.
“What we are now saying is we know better and it’s on us to do better so that we can help people feel positive and destigmatize this conversation around obesity,” WeightWatchers CEO Sima Sistani said in an interview with CNN in December 2023.
That same month, Sistani told NPR that Winfrey “stands by” the WeightWatchers board, their “business vision” and “program offerings.”
“We all know that her story has been one that has been a generational story and one that mimics so many people who, on a day-to-day basis, struggle with the same shame and bias, where weight loss has been associated with a preoccupation around thinness,” the executive told the outlet.
Meanwhile, the TV personality revealed she was using an unspecified weight loss medication in December 2023 after previously suggesting that taking the celebrity-loved Ozempic would be an “easy way out.”
“I now use it as I feel I need it, as a tool to manage not yo-yoing,” Winfrey told People at the time.
“The fact that there’s a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier, in my lifetime, feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for.”
She added, “I’m absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself.”
The revelation came a few months after she subtly shaded those using Ozempic to shed pounds.
“When I first started hearing about the weight loss drugs … I was going through knee surgery, and I felt, ‘I’ve got to do this on my own,” Winfrey explained during a September episode of “Oprah Daily’s The Life You Want: The State of Weight.”
“Because if I take the drug, that’s the easy way out.”
Winfrey added she was tempted to use the drug after being “shamed in the tabloids every week for about 25 years” for not having the “willpower” to lose weight.
“I don’t know if there is another public person whose weight struggle has been exploited as much as mine over the years,” she continued.
At the time, she advocated for people to be “more accepting of whatever body” someone chooses to be in.
As if Oprah needs to gain anything financially….
