Oprah Winfrey took the Croisette at Cannes Lions on Tuesday, drawing a crowd that filled the event venue’s stage-level seating to the brim about 30 minutes ahead of the 10 a.m. start time of her keynote appearance.

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Soon, folks started making their way to the upper level to ensure they could catch the TV host, producer, actress, author, philanthropist and outright media icon.

And when Winfrey took to the stage, phone cameras lit up the room as the crowd erupted into a roar.

Winfrey came to town to receive the 2026 Cannes LionHeart an honor celebrating “individuals who are driving positive change.” As such, it is designed to recognize “those who use creativity, influence and leadership as a force for good.”

Winfrey discussed her work and values during the annual Cannes LionHeart Seminar on Tuesday morning with Phil Thomas, the chairman of the Festival of Creativity, at the Lumière Theatre at the Palais des Festivals. Cannes Lions CEO Simon Cook had told The Hollywood Reporter that Oprah embodies the Lions’ spirit. In his introduction, Thomas highlighted Winfrey’s decades of influential work and shared how long it took him to get her to Cannes Lions, mentioning that he found his first-ever email invitation to her team – from 2012.

”I’m grateful for your persistence,” Winfrey told him after welcoming the crowd. Was she nervous? “Not a bit!” she shared.

Asked about the Oprah brand, she shared that originally, “I resisted 100 percent ever being called a brand. I didn’t want to be a brand. … My real intention was being authentic” and being “true to myself.” But now she accepts that representing a brand is part of her work and fits her mission as long as the brand is a full expression of who she is and wants to be.

“Authentic empowerment … nobody can take away from you,” no matter what subscription or other trends may be, she told creators in the audience. “Never lose sight of the real reason you have come to Planet Earth,” which puts you in service of something that is bigger than you. Her advice: don’t try to be the best TV host or creator. Focus on being the best human being you can and want to be. “Your legacy is every life you touch.”

Winfrey also shared that she learned to “not just let television use me,” but focus on the question of “how do I transform that [platform] into a force for good.” In repeatedly emphasizing the importance of being authentic, she also shared that saying “yes” when you mean “no” costs you the energy of resentment.

Winfrey emphasized that discussing their intentions with interview guests is key for her to ensure authenticity and alignment rather than a voyeuristic focus. She recalled Whitney Houston’s final performance on her TV show in that context.

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“I had such trust from The Oprah Winfrey Show audience,” she shared. “Whitney did what I think was her last show with us, and she had gone back on drugs. The first interview I did with her … she was clean, 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 recalled. “I knew that if that story got out that she’d fallen off the stage, she would be destroyed by that, 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.” Winfrey added that in today’s age of mobile phones and social media, things would surely be different.

Now, people take selfies with her, but in the old days, Winfrey recalled signing autographs, which was tiring. “What do I want?” she learned to ask herself, the star told the Cannes Lions crowd. Her answer was she would rather talk to people in the audience about their lives and what brought them to her show, which she did. Winfrey shared that this allowed her to learn so much and also served as research for her team.

Winfrey also shared other lessons from her career. ”Was that okay?” is the most common question she gets from interview partners, including from the biggest names, she shared. That includes the likes of Beyoncé, who taught her how to twerk, as Winfrey recalled to laughter, and Barack Obama, among others. Winfrey’s takeaway: everybody wants to he heard, seen and understood.

Earlier this year, Winfrey struck a deal to move The Oprah Podcast, her book club and more to Amazon’s Wondery. Under the agreement, The Oprah Podcast will expand to two episodes per week starting this summer, with Wondery gaining exclusive distribution and advertising rights to the show’s audio and video. The deal also covers rights to The Oprah Winfrey Show library, Oprah’s Book Club and Oprah’s Favorite Things, with the opportunity to integrate the two further across Amazon.

Starting in July, Wondery will distribute The Oprah Podcast across Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Music, Fire TV Channels, and Audible. The show will also continue to be available on YouTube and wherever podcasts are available.

Winfrey is also among the familiar voices who will guide visitors on the audio tours of the Obama Presidential Center. She and Tom Hanks will narrate portions of the audio tour for the presidential library.

Winfrey left to a rousing standing ovation and cheers. A DJ inside the Lumière Theatre had warmed up the crowd for her – not that attendees needed any more motivation. Cheers of “Oprah!” echoed through the air even as one entered the venue. Ushers asking people to move on to a different door because one side of the hall was already full heard such comments as “Please tell me I can still get in!” and “I’ll be happy to stand!”

While Oprah was the Tuesday morning magnet for attendees, elsewhere on the Croisette, things were more quiet than on the first Cannes Lions morning on Monday. After all, there was a lot of business talk and networking going on until late. “There were a lot of parties last night,” one person working around the Palais told THR.

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