I’m an Oprah fan! I enjoy many shows on her new network, OWN. One of my favorites is Lifeclass, where Oprah and an expert of some kind help you with everyday life issues. I was lucky enough to attend a taping of Lifeclass with Iyanla Vanzant on “Why Women Are Mean to Each Other”. So imagine how happy I was to attend another Lifeclass with Dr. Phil! The topic was his new book, Life Code. I was able to read the book before class…interesting topic of how to protect yourself from those bad people out there. You know the ones! Dr. Phil calls them baiters.
I invited my friend, Dara, to attend with me and we were so excited to get to Harpo Studios. We practiced our “selfies” to post on twitter. 🙂 We were there for two tapings, which meant a pretty big time frame, so they offered us some Subway sandwiches in the holding room. This is where you wait after you check in.
The last Lifeclass taping was held in the same studio as the Oprah Show was held. For this Lifeclass, they built a more intimate studio. We got to walk through a lot of Harpo to get to it. I thought it was really cool to see new “behind the scenes” areas.
Speaking of “behind the scenes”, this next picture is literally behind the screen that you see on the show. It shows the tweets and pins that people are posting live. I didn’t realize you could see through it. One of my tweets made it to this board later during taping.
You are assigned to seats and one of the friendly staff people direct you where to go. Dara and I had made some friends while we were in the holding room and then we were seated right next to them. So, of course, we had to get our picture taken. (sorry for the quality)
After we were seated, I got busy taking pictures for you. These pics below show the room and everyone working before Dr. Phil and Oprah arrived. The lady with the mike is Sally Lou. She seems to be in charge of everything that happens before the show gets started. She is full of energy!
I managed to snap a few shots of the stars of the evening!
Attending a double taping was a new experience for me. After the first taping, the audience team (Sally Lou and company) moved people all around so the audience would look different for the second show. Dara and I were moved from one side of the room to the other. Both times we were on the front row, which was awesome! This time I ended up sitting next to Katherine Cunningham, who is an actress on the show Chicago Fire. She was super sweet and lovely. (That’s her in the picture below)
I love the color combination of pink and green. In fact, I decorated my daughter’s baby room that way. Oprah must love them as well, because she started the night in a green shirt and came out for the second show in a pink one. I really liked the pink one on her.
Remember when I said my tweet made it to the screen during taping? Well, I’ve circled it below. That is my twitter name @happyhoyt. I was hoping Oprah would ask my question to Dr. Phil, but she didn’t. 🙁
If you are an Oprah fan, you might remember when they tricked those ladies and drove them right up on the stage during an Oprah Show? Well, we left Harpo Studio out of that door. Again, I really enjoyed seeing new parts of Harpo Studios. Made the experience even more special.
After we left the building, we took a lot of pictures of the signs and such. Even though I have been to Harpo three times, I have never taken pictures of the outside. I made up for it this time. We spent lots of time snapping pics of everything.
As usual, I was interested in the topic of Lifeclass, but you can watch that on OWN and hear all of Dr. Phil’s wisdom and Oprah’s great thoughts. I just wanted to share what the experience is like to attend a taping. We had a great time!
Check out what other travelers are doing on Travel Photo Thursday, Travel Photo Monday, Mosaic Monday and Friday Daydreamin!
Wow!
That was one of my favorite shows (besides the one with Dr Brian Weiss and Panache Desai).
Lucky you! I love Dr Phil. He just tells it as it is.
How fortunate you are!
I have been to show tappings and it's quite long but I bet you came out feeling empowered right?
Thank you for sharing and happy to know you had a fun time with your friend 😉
K
It was a great experience! I like Dr Phil's tell it like it is attitude as well. It was fun to see him "behind the scenes" with Oprah. They were teasing and cutting up. If you watched the show did you see me in that shirt I'm wearing above? If you catch a rerun, look for me. I was in the show a lot. 🙂
wow, that looked like alot of fun, thanks for sharing the inside view of this studio.
I loved the experience! Glad to share!
What a great 'inside' story. You watch these talk shows and only get the usual sweeping glimpse of the audience so it is fun to hear what really happens out there.
I'm glad you enjoyed it. I just went to another one this week and took more pictures. Each time it is a different experience.
How exciting. Glad you enjoyed it and it was great seeing behind the scenes of such a well known show.
This sounds like such a wonderful experience. I love all the behind-the-scenes photos. You are so lucky to have been to so many tapings. Oprah's original show went off the air right about the time that we moved overseas, and I haven't had a chance to watch anything on OWN since they don't broadcast it in Malaysia.
You can watch a lot of it on Oprah.com and the OWN network has a YouTube channel. Let me know if those work for you.
How lucky you are to have such a neat experience!
Interestingly enough, just last week, another Oprah fan shared with me her experience on the show. She went to several tapings and actually went to Australia with Oprah.
It must have been so neat to see your tweet live.
That would have been awesome to go to Australia! And yes, I was so excited to see my tweet! 🙂
What a fantastic experience! Looks like fun and so interesting!
Thank you for coming to link up to Travel Tuesday.
Thanks for hosting!
So neat! It sounds like an awesome studio. I've been to the taping of Nate Berkus and Martha but things aren't as interactive.
Great to have you at "Oh, the PLACES I've been!" Hope to see you this Friday (but kindly include a link back)!
– The Tablescaper
Attending Nate Berkus and Martha would be fun! Sorry about the link, not sure what happened there. 🙂
How fun for you and your friend!
I never saw this post from you. How lucky were you!!!