Meet Gayle King: US TV star and Meghan and Oprah’s close friend
The CBS This Morning co-host is a powerful member of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s inner circle
Shortly before the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s revealing Oprah Winfrey interview aired, Gayle King upped the climate of anticipation when she commented that she had ‘heard from reliable sources – this is Oprah talking – that it’s the best interview she’s ever done.’ Indeed the CBS This Morning co-host is both a close friend of Oprah’s and a significant figure in Prince Harry and Meghan’s life, especially since the couple settled in California.
King had a notable influence in the US media narrative surrounding Harry and Meghan’s interview, with the Telegraph going so far as to dub her ‘a fourth, hidden presence looming over proceedings that day.’ Not only metaphorically, but in a very physical sense too, with the paper reporting that the ‘friend’s place’ where the interview was filmed was in fact King’s home.
In the wake of the television appearance, which aired in the US on Sunday 8 March, it was covered in depth on CBS This morning in the following days. Winfrey even appeared on the show to help dissect the discussion, and as a friend of Meghan’s herself (the anchor was reportedly among the guests at the Duchess’s New York baby shower in 2019), King was also able to offer some insights of her own. She stated one morning: ‘Well, I’m not trying to break news… but I did actually call them to see how they were feeling’, before offering what were apparently the couple’s personal reflections on the fallout from the interview.
King clearly constitutes another powerful media figure in Harry and Meghan’s social circle, with a US TV source telling the Telegraph: ‘Everyone knows if you want to get through to Oprah, it’s Gayle you have to work on… What’s confusing people here is whether Gayle has accepted to be a mouthpiece for Meghan herself – or for Oprah. Oprah’s certainly never felt the need to align herself with interviewees before, so it’s not clear why she would do so now, especially with the interview done and aired.’
The 66-year-old is a well-known figure in the American television landscape. A highly-regarded news anchor, she’s occupied her role as co-host of CBS This Morning since the weekday programme first aired in 2012. Although King was born in the US, she spent some of her childhood in Ankara, in Turkey. Her family later returned and King obtained a psychology degree from the University of Maryland. She began her career as a production assistant at WJZ-TV in Baltimore and met her longtime friend Winfrey in 1976, who was then serving as an anchor for the station. King soon moved in front of the camera herself after training as a reporter at the WUSA television station in Washington DC. She became a weekend anchor and general-assignment reporter at WDAF-TV in Kansas City, Missouri, before relocating to Hartford in Connecticut, where she served as a news anchor for WFSB for 18 years.
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King has long been closely involved with Winfrey both personally and professionally, having worked as a special correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show. She’s also a journalist and author, acting as Editor-at-Large for O, The Oprah Magazine (which now exists primarily online following its last print edition in December 2020). King followed in her friend’s footsteps when she fronted her own talk show, The Gayle King Show, in 1997, although the programme was cancelled after one season. It went on to have a rebirth, however, debuting on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) in January 2011. The show came to an end later that year, when King took up her post at CBS to become a co-anchor for CBS This Morning alongside Charlie Rose.
King quickly became a beloved figure on the programme, before leading it into a new era after Rose’s contract with CBS was terminated in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against him. King was widely praised for her handling of the scandal, during which she publicly called on CBS to behave with full transparency, after it emerged that the network had planned to keeping findings about internal sexual abuse and harassment under wraps. She also made waves for her mastery of a now infamous interview with R Kelly, in which she remained calm and composed as he grew angry and physically expressive, rising from his chair and shouting while she questioned the singer about sexual abuse allegations against him.
King was previously married to an attorney, Bill Bumpus, between 1982 and 1993, with who she has a son and a daughter. A woman whose career has gone from strength to strength, King has been honoured with an induction into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame, and was chosen as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2019. She’s also consistently been championed by Winfrey – and visa versa – with the two women having been friends for some 45 years. Speaking to Barbara Walters in 2010, Winfrey described King as ‘the mother I never had… the sister everybody would want… the friend everybody deserves,’ concluding: ‘I don’t know a better person’. No doubt Harry and Meghan are only too pleased to have such a woman in their corner.
