Though she’s often viewed as the world’s most influential woman, Oprah Winfrey can’t always have her way.
South Carolina Gov. elect Nikki Haley said Thursday that she wouldn’t allow Winfrey to interview Susan Smith, a South Carolina woman sentenced to life in prison for murdering her two children in 1995.
Though Oprah says she’s been trying to schedule an interview with Smith for years and is merely attempting to have this done in her show’s final season, Haley is abiding by the state Department of Corrections’ policy of barring inmates from being interview.
Rob Godfrey, a spokesman for Haley, said in a recent statement that Haley’s decision to deny an interview does not reflect Haley’s views on Winfrey.
“While Gov.-elect Haley has great respect for Oprah, let’s be clear: Ms. Smith got enough press when she killed her two children and lied about it to the country,” Godfrey said. “South Carolina suffered enough from this tragedy, and we are now focused on the positives in our great state.”
In the April edition of Oprah Magazine, Winfrey explained her repeated efforts to try to interview Smith.
“Not because of the horrific-ness of what she did, but because she changed the way we look at parents in this country…When somebody comes forward and says, ‘My child is missing,’ we now suspect the parents first. She changed the paradigm,” Winfrey wrote.