PASADENA, CALIF. - Three years after an extortion scandal that led him to bare his infidelities, David Letterman said he sees a psychiatrist once a week to try to be the person that he believed he was.
The late-night talk show host gave an interview to Oprah Winfrey in which he talked about his feud with her and Jay Leno and about his efforts to make amends for his affairs with "Late Show" staff members, which became public in 2009. "For a long time I thought I was a decent guy," Letterman said. "But yet, thinking I was a decent guy, I was still capable of behavior that wasn't coincidental to leading a decent life. That's what I'm working on. I want to really be the person I believe that I was. I wanna be a good person."
Letterman said his wife, Regina, has forgiven him, and he tries every day to regain her trust. He said he still hasn't forgiven himself. Letterman said he went through depression that he described as a sinkhole that he thought he wouldn't come out of. But with medication, he said, he pulled through and told Winfrey he now has compassion for others who have gone through depression. "I always thought, 'Aw, you're depressed? Go do some push-ups and you'll feel better,' " he said. "But it's not that."
The interview aired Sunday on Winfrey's OWN network and will be repeated Jan. 20.
2 classic soaps scheduled for cyberspace After some classic soap opera twists -- union spats, outraged fans, squishy financing -- Hollywood production company Prospect Park confirmed that the canceled "All My Children" and "One Life to Live" would live on in cyberspace. Prospect Park said production would resume in February on the serial dramas, both of which ended epic runs in recent months after ABC decided the costly programs had dim futures. When new episodes will be made available via theOnlineNetwork.com is not clear. Which cast members might return also is not clear. But Prospect Park has solved the union and financing problems that torpedoed the soap-saving effort after it was first announced in the fall.
BIG NUMBERS: Preliminary ratings for the third season premiere of "Downton Abbey" suggest that the show has done something remarkable: catapulted PBS into the same league as commercial broadcasters ABC and NBC, at least for a night. With 7.9 million viewers, the premiere Sunday night "quadrupled the average PBS prime-time rating and exceeded the average rating of the second season premiere of 'Downton Abbey' by 96 percent," PBS said. While "Downton Abbey" was on, PBS outrated Fox, ABC and NBC, according to preliminary Nielsen ratings. (CBS still ranked No. 1 for the night with episodes of "The Good Wife" with 10 million viewers and "The Mentalist" with 10.7 million.)
