Oprah Winfrey got super emotional while watching Gayle King blast off into space during Monday’s Blue Origin mission.
Footage captured a teary-eyed Winfrey totally overwhelmed as she watched King join Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez, Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyễn, and Kerianne Flynn on their adventure into the cosmos.
After the spacecraft touched down in West Texas on Monday (April 14), Winfrey opened up to BET about seeing King journey to space and the deep impact she believes it’ll have on her longtime bestie.
“Well, here’s the thing…I’ve been so calm. So many people have been asking me how I’m doing, am I nervous. I wasn’t nervous at all,” Winfrey said. “I knew that the team being engineers, the hand of God, all of it was coming together for this moment for her.”
“From the moment she said yes, I was like, ‘Now that she’s said yes, we’re all committed to it working,” she added. “So I wasn’t emotional at all. I was just in the moment.”
But when Winfrey spotted the “fire under the rocket,” she started “spontaneously crying” for King’s journey. “She was willing to overcome this and step into her fears is such a big deal. It’s bigger than any rocket launch.”
After watching King grab and “kiss” the ground when she landed, Winfrey feels the CBS Mornings co-host will be “changed forever.” “We’ve been through so many experiences, I was thinking this morning, so many things that I’ve forgotten, but this day you’ll never forget,” she said. After returning, King told CBS News that being in space felt “oddly quiet” and “peaceful.”
“You look down at the planet and you think that’s where we came from? To me it’s such a reminder about how we need to do better, be better,” she said.
