Oprah Winfrey Denies Nervous Breakdown Reports

*According to TV mogul Oprah Winfrey, the reports about her suffering a nervous breakdown earlier this year are completely false.

Winfrey sat down with “Access Hollywood” and revealed that she was in fact stressed about the struggles her OWN Network was facing and having to balance the shooting schedule for “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” at the same time. She admitted that she was at a point where she simply couldn’t take on anything else.

“In the beginning, it was just sort of speeding and a kind of numbness and going from one thing to the next thing to the next thing. I will tell you when I realized that I thought, ‘All right, if I don’t calm down I’m gonna be in serious trouble.’ I was in the middle of doing voiceovers, you know? And I remember closing my eyes in between each page because looking at the page and the words at the same time was too much stimulation for my brain,” she told the news magazine show.

Though Winfrey clarified, “I mean, I wasn’t ready to go run naked in the streets. Let’s make that very clear. But I had reached a point where I just couldn’t take in any more stimulation. OK? That’s what I meant by that.” Headlines still ran claiming that the celebrated talk show host had nearly suffered a nervous breakdown.

Her best friend, Galye King, called the claims exaggerated.

“It’s being portrayed like she was very close to losing it and that she couldn’t take it anymore and that was not the case. It was one of those things where you say ‘this is a lot, but she wasn’t about to lose it,’” King explained to her morning show co-hosts.

Winfrey then refuted the “Access Hollywood” interpretation of events on her Twitter page. To a fan who inquired, Winfrey replied: “never had a breakdown. not even close. story blown way out of proportion. #OverWorked”