Rickey Smiley is the latest public figure to defend Whitney Houston after Oprah Winfrey’s recent comments about the late icon’s final appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” sparked backlash from Houston’s estate, fans and people close to the singer.
View this post on Instagram
During a recent reaction shared on his platforms, Smiley criticized Oprah and Gayle King as being out of touch with the Black community while addressing Oprah’s claim that Houston had relapsed on drugs and fell off the stage during her 2009 appearance on the show.
“I don’t care if she was high or not,” Smiley said. “I just don’t play when it come to Whitney Houston. She is an aunt to us. She means a lot to the black community. She is a treasure to Black folks.”
The comments came after Oprah spoke at Cannes Lions and revisited Houston’s 2009 appearance on her talk show. According to Entertainment Weekly, Oprah said Houston “had gone back on drugs” and claimed the singer was not clean on the day she performed. Oprah also said Houston “fell off of the stage,” adding that she begged audience members not to share photos because it would “ruin her life.”
The story quickly drew pushback from Houston’s estate. In a statement shared with TMZ, Pat Houston, who manages the estate, confirmed Whitney did fall, but denied Oprah’s version of why it happened.
“Whitney absolutely fell off the stage, but it was during a sound check, and it was due to the darkness of the area and her unfamiliarity with the stage,” Pat said. “She was absolutely not high.”
The estate also said it was “inaccurate and unfair” to connect every difficult moment in Whitney’s life to her personal battles, adding that the audience witnessed “discipline, talent, and commitment, not the assumptions others project.”
Houston’s longtime bodyguard Ray Watson later backed up the estate’s account. In an interview with TMZ, Watson said Houston was not high when she fell. He claimed she simply could not see the edge of the stage because it was dark and stepped in the wrong place.
The controversy has reopened a larger conversation about how Whitney Houston is remembered more than a decade after her death. Houston died in 2012 at age 48. Her final Oprah appearance aired in September 2009 and featured an emotional performance of “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength.”
For Smiley, the issue appears to be less about whether Oprah intended harm and more about how protective Black audiences remain over Houston’s legacy. His message was clear: Whitney’s struggles do not erase what she represented.
“She is an aunt to us,” he said. “She means a lot to the black community.”
