ALL SMILES: Phil McGraw says no money changed hands when Oprah Winfrey gave him ownership of his show. (
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ALL SMILES: Phil McGraw says no money changed hands when Oprah Winfrey gave him ownership of his show. (
)
Phil McGraw has no illusions about how he got to be the No. 1 talk show on daytime TV.
“Make no mistake,” he says. “I’d been No. 2 for nine years and all it took for me to be No. 1 was for [Oprah] to say, ‘I’m hanging it up.’ ”
The talk-show host — who made an estimated $80 million last year — has other things for which to thank Oprah Winfrey.
For starters, early in the run of his show, Winfrey handed over ownership of “Dr. Phil” to McGraw — something she’s never done with any of her other proteges.
“I said to her, ‘I think I should own the show’ and she said, ‘Let me think about that,’ ” McGraw says. “And the next day she said, ‘You’re right, this show is you and you should own it, so let’s just make the switch.’ No money changed hands. Nothing. We had a division of profits from the show and that remained the same. She just said, ‘I think people ought to own themselves, let’s just do it.’ ”
When asked if he feels “lucky” to have reached the heights of daytime TV stardom, McGraw gives an interesting, thoughtful answer.
“Yes and no,” he says, “and I’ll tell you why: I consider myself fortunate, but I think the harder you work the luckier you get.
“Mine is certainly not a rags-to-riches story because I had a very blessed life before this — I owned my own company, lived in a beautiful home on a great golf course in Dallas and had a great lifestyle.
“I had an advantage in that I was 50 before I ever came to Hollywood and started my own show — and if you don’t know who you are by the time you’re 50, then you had some problems before you got there.”
One part of his life McGraw obviously enjoys is his grandchildren, London, 1, and his big sister, Avery, 2 1/2 (parents are Phil’s son, Jay and his wife, Erica). “London was born on the last day of August and I was born on the first day of September, so we shared a party,” he says.
“I have to tell you, and all grandparents know this, but [the grandkids] are so much fun. [Wife] Robin and I didn’t have both of them at the same time a lot until just recently. Avery is walking and talking and being a girl, and just bending over to hold her hand, my knees are for s–t. You know, getting on the floor . . . they have a couple of tent-type teepees and they want me to get in with them. My knees are barking — but I’m in there.”
McGraw, 62, credits his show’s success to “stepping into the void” created by Winfrey’s departure.
“Oprah did a lot of celebrity shows . . . but I’m just not really interested in that, to some degree,” he says. “We do movies and books but it’s gotta have something that’s relevant to people’s lives — something you can get a ‘takeaway’ from.”