Oprah Winfrey is ‘sorry’ over Switzerland handbag incident after clerk denies it ever happened

Now that Oprah Winfrey has caused a media firestorm over her comment that she experienced racism in Switzerland, she’s got a mess to clean up. The former talk show host has now apologized for her comments and said that she didn’t think it would get so much attention.

Winfrey told Entertainment Tonight last week that while she was in Switzerland for Tina Turner’s wedding, a shopkeeper told her that a $40,000 handbag was “too expensive” for her to look at. She claimed that the shopkeeper didn’t recognize her and used it as an example that she had personally experienced racism recently and that it exists everywhere.

The comments grabbed considerable attention, as does everything Winfrey says. So, Swiss tourism officials even released statements, with Christian Trottmann, the head of corporate communications, calling it “regrettable.”

But then the Trois Pommes clerk who spoke with Winfrey said that this never happened. According to The Daily Mail, she told a local paper that “This is not true. This is absurd. I would never say something like that to a customer. Really never. Good manners and politeness are the Alpha and the Omega in this business.”

On Monday night, Winfrey was at the LA premiere of Lee Daniels’ The Butler, where she told reporters that she was “sorry” for her comments. “I think that incident in Switzerland was just an incident in Switzerland,” she said, the AP reports. “I’m really sorry that it got blown up. I purposefully did not mention the name of the store. I’m sorry that I said it was Switzerland.”

Winfrey added, “I was just referencing it as an example of being in a place where people don’t expect that you would be able to be there.”

She also said that Switzerland shouldn’t have to apologize. “It’s not an indictment against the country or even that store,” she said. “It was just one person who didn’t want to offer me the opportunity to see the bag. So no apologies necessary from the country of Switzerland. If somebody makes a mistake in the United States do we apologize in front of the whole country? No!”

image: ABC