NEED TO KNOW
- Gayle King revealed that her friend Oprah Winfrey “loved” the “you get a car” bit from the 2025 Tony Awards in an exclusive interview with PEOPLE at the opening night of Broadway’s Call Me Izzy on June 12
- During the Tonys ceremony on June 8, host Cynthia Erivo surprised Winfrey with a gift bag under her seat containing a small red toy car
- The toy was a playful nod to a memorable 2004 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show when each of the 276 audience members was given a car as part of the show’s “Wildest Dreams Come True” season
Gayle King is sharing her friend Oprah Winfrey’s reaction to the 2025 Tony Awards’ hilarious callout to her 2004 car giveaway.
During theater’s biggest night on June 8, Winfrey, 71, was treated to a little surprise courtesy of the ceremony’s host, Cynthia Erivo, as seen in a video shared by The Hollywood Reporter. As Winfrey sat in the audience next to King, 70, Erivo approached and said, “Miss Oprah, as a change of pace, I thought we should give you a gift,” referring to Winfrey’s love for surprising her talk show audience members with gifts, both big and small.
“Check under your chair,” Erivo, 38, prompted.
Winfrey then retrieved a small bag and proceeded to pull out a box of Junior Mints and a bag of Haribo Goldbears, as Erivo asked, “What’s the other thing? What’s that other thing in there?”
The media mogul then pulled out a small red toy car. “You get a car!” Erivo declared, as Winfrey laughed and the audience erupted with cheers and clapping.
“I’ve been waiting all night to do that,” Erivo added.
When PEOPLE caught up with King at the opening night of the Broadway show Call Me Izzy in New York City on Thursday, June 12, the CBS News journalist revealed that Winfrey got a kick out of the lighthearted Tonys surprise.
“Oh, she loved that,” she says. “That is so iconic. That is such an iconic thing. It’s associated with Oprah. It’s always [been] a big compliment, always.”
King told PEOPLE that while the toy car bit was a complete surprise to Winfrey, she was in on the secret. “I knew [Erivo] was going to do that,” she says. “I loved that moment.”
Winfrey, whose long-running talk show was well known for its epic giveaways, permanently etched herself into pop culture history in 2004 when she surprised an audience of 276 people by giving each of them a new Pontiac G-6 car during her “Wildest Dreams Come True” season. But it wasn’t just the over-the-top giveaway that made the TV moment so memorable — it was also Winfrey’s enthusiastic delivery of the big news.
After having everyone simultaneously open a box containing a set of car keys, and seeing some confusion on their faces, she loudly declared, “You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! Everybody gets a car!” as she spread her arms wide. The moment spawned countless memes and GIFs that remain popular more than 20 years later.
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Winfrey later reflected on the car giveaway in a 2011 OWN special, saying, “The buildup to that surprise that day was almost more than I can handle,” per Oprah Daily.
In a 2024 interview with PEOPLE, Winfrey shared that King disapproved of the outfit she wore that day — a red Celine suit. “I was like, ‘I’m going to wear the red suit because the red suit matches the red bows,’ ” Winfrey explained. “And that was the best decision. That red suit. It has carried us through a couple of decades now.”
She also recalled in a 2022 PEOPLE interview how King flew in to watch the event unfold in person — and how it remains “one of the happiest days of my life.”
“It delights me, it makes me so happy, to see other people be happy and to be able to do that. That’s one of the great joys of my life,” Winfrey said.
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