Oprah Winfrey admits she begged talk show audience to bury footage of Whitney Houston onstage fall - Fox News

Video 'Seen and Unseen': Oprah has a new mission Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo discusses Oprah Winfrey's new diet take on 'The Ingraham Angle.' Oprah Winfrey is shedding new light on Whitney Houston's troubled final years, revealing that the late singer fell off the stage while performing during a 2009 taping of "The Oprah Winfrey Show." During a recent appearance at Cannes Lions, where she was honored with the LionHeart Award, the 72-year-old former talk show host spoke out about the previously undisclosed incident, which she said occurred after Houston relapsed amid her longtime battle with drug addiction. "This was an amazing thing that happened. I had such trust from the 'Oprah Show' audience that Whitney did, I think, what was her last show with us. She had gone back on drugs," Winfrey said in a clip shared on social media by Variety. ROBERT DE NIRO WAS ‘SMITTEN’ WITH WHITNEY HOUSTON, BUT TOLD TO ‘STOP MAKING A FOOL’ OF HIMSELF: AUTHOR Oprah Winfrey revealed that Whitney Houston fell off the stage during a taping of "The Oprah Winfrey Show." (Paras Griffin/Getty Images; Lester Cohen/WireImage) "The first interview I did with her when we'd gone behind stage and I asked about her intentions, she was clean," the TV icon continued. "But the day she came to my show to perform in front of the audience, she was not, and she fell off of the stage." Winfrey said she took immediate steps to prevent the incident from becoming public, fearing that exposure of Houston's fall would further damage the singer at a vulnerable point in her life. "I knew that if that story got out … she would be destroyed by that," Winfrey said. "And so even though the audience was there, and the audience had cameras, I begged them not to put those pictures out because it would ruin her life, and they did not." "That would not happen today, I can tell you that," she added. Houston appeared on the show while mounting her comeback in 2009. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images) Houston had appeared on the show as part of her highly publicized 2009 comeback following years out of the spotlight and intense public scrutiny over her personal life. At the time, Houston was promoting "I Look to You," her first studio album in seven years following 2002's "Just Whitney." During her appearance, she performed one of the songs from the album, "I Didn't Know My Own Strength." Winfrey said the fall occurred during that performance.