Oprah Winfrey Addresses Reports on 'Secret Son' Ambush
Celebrity

Earlier this month, Oprah was reportedly 'ambushed' by a man claiming to be her 'secret son' outside the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York.

AceShowbiz - Oprah Winfrey sets the record straight on a recent tabloid story which claimed she was "ambushed" by her "secret son" named Calvin Mithcell outside the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York earlier this month. In a phone interview with ET, Oprah explains her relationship with Calvin and what really happened that night.

"I met Calvin around the early '90s, I think it was 1992. I was doing a film for television called 'There Are No Children Here'," Oprah tells the site, confirming that Calvin is not her birth son. "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," she continues.

Oprah and her partner Stedman Graham decided to help Calvin by paying for his school and getting his mother a job. Calvin was later expelled from school and Oprah looked for another school in Mississippi. "I found a school in Mississippi that was a private boarding school because I thought if I could remove him from the environment that he'd been accustomed to growing up in, that maybe that would be helpful to him."

At the age of 16, Calvin told Oprah that he couldn't stay at boarding school because "the teachers didn't like him." Oprah recalls telling Calvin, "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."

When Oprah met Calvin again in New York after a taping of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" earlier this month, she didn't immediately recognize him but tried to contact him afterwards. Oprah had already suspected that Calvin told his story to tabloids.

"I could see the little boy in his eyes, even though time has changed a lot for him, and I said to him, 'What are you doing? Why did you go to the tabloids?' " she recalls, "As I left, and he was looking so forlorn, he was like, 'Can I speak to you?' So I said to somebody on my team, 'Will somebody get Calvin's number so I can contact him later?' "

"I didn't realize the whole thing was a setup. When I realized the whole thing was a setup, I was no longer interested in speaking to him," she continues, noting that she's not hurt, but "disappointed."

In an interview with Radar Online earlier this month, Calvin, now 35, claimed Oprah tried to adopt him as a boy, but then abandoned him as a teen. "We had a close relationship," Calvin said, "Oprah and Stedman were like family to me."

Calvin said he went into deep depression after allegedly being abandoned. "I want to ask Oprah, 'Why did you leave me? Why did you leave me?' " he told the site, "I'm still empty. I'm still searching. I don't have closure to this. I just don't understand."

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