Oprah Winfrey kicked off her nationwide wellness tour, called “Oprah’s 2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus,” in Broward County on Saturday with the message that humans are instinctively happy and collaborative, as well as trusting and respectful.
The talk show host and media executive told a sold-out audience of more than 15,000 people, “Our desires are the same. We want health. We want abundance. We want to be prosperous for ourselves and our families. We want to be connected … and we want to be uplifted in our lives.”
The daylong event, which incorporated elements of a health seminar, blended with a celebrity fan fest, political campaign and church revival, began a nine-city run at the BB&T Center in Sunrise, highlighted by Q&A session with singer-actor Lady Gaga, and an appearance by dancer-actor Julianne Hough.
Gaga shared with the audience her experience of being raped repeatedly at age 19, and the resulting mental issues that manifested in pain from fibromyalgia.
Ongoing psychiatric therapy and medication, in addition to good friends, have allowed her to retake control of her life, she added. The singer says: “I believe all things were supposed to happen. Because God was saying to me, ‘I am going to show you pain and then you are going to help people in pain.’”
Winfrey touched on rumors of a 2020 presidential run, saying, “We did talk about Oprah 2020. That has a nice ring to it, I think. And then, we knew for sure, that people might get, uhhhh, the wrong idea. If we were talking about something other than wellness.”
Fort Lauderdale, I’m on my way to kick off my @ww_us 2020 Vision Tour in your city! Let me know if you have any questions for @ladygaga and I might just get you an answer this Saturday. Get tickets to join the party: https://t.co/F8xR5l0b9k
#Oprahs2020VisionTour pic.twitter.com/DzNLYv1Ags
— Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) January 2, 2020
She continued, “In fact, 2020 is an important year for so many reasons. Because there are people who would very much like to highlight all of the differences and the divide that we are experiencing in our country. But I was saying to reporters yesterday, I said, ‘You’re going to come to this room and you’re going to see people from red states and blue states and purple states and no states and out of states and out of town and out of the country and everybody is going to be in agreement on one thing. That we all want to get better in our lives!”
Hough, who is an Emmy-winning choreographer, two-time winner of “Dancing with the Stars,” and served as a judge on the most recent season of “American’s Got Talent,” led a dance session in the afternoon.
Oprah’s best friend, Gayle King, was in the audience, as were Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis, fashion icon Iris Apfel, Adrienne Bosh, wife of former Miami Heat star Chris Bosh, and Instagram fashion arbiter Eva Chen.