[Filling Oprah's Shoes?] Steve Harvey Sits Down With President Obama

Dreams do come true, and Steve Harvey is living proof.

The widely popular daytime talk show host has landed an exclusive one-on-one sit-down with President Obama!  But don’t expect political messiness during the one-hour interview that’s set to air next week. Rather than discuss political controversies like record low approval ratings and the selfie that made front page news, Steve kept things light and more holiday-themed with talks of fatherhood, family, holiday plans and more.

“Sitting down with the President is something I’ve always dreamt of doing, and I am honored to have the opportunity,” said Steve in a statement about the forthcoming interview. “I’m grateful to President Obama for welcoming me and I’m thrilled to share this experience with all my viewers.”

During an interview with NBC News, he also shared:

I’m just a little boy from Welch, West Virginia that’s talking to the President of the United States. The greatest moment in that interview for me was when he was talking about his grandmother, who he misses. She passed in her eighties and my mom passed in her eighties and I said to the President, ‘I heard a rumor that your grandmother and my mother have met and that they are on the front row watching us right now.’ That was a really cool moment between me and the President and it meant a lot to him too so I felt pretty good about that.
I’ve met him before but this interview is a little different, you know. I think I talked to him the way most people don’t talk to the President. I told him I wanted a man-on-man interview. I don’t care about the politics, it’s not important to me. Look, he’s a great guy. There is a section of people that don’t agree with what he does, and then there are those of us that get it so I don’t have to go into that again. I said, let’s talk about family, let’s talk about the wives, let’s talk about Christmas, let’s talk about those girls, we’ve got girls the same age, and how he felt about fatherhood. It was pretty good.

When asked for his thoughts on the president’s recent selfie controversy, Steve shared:

I thought it was perfectly fine, so what? It was a celebration of life. It wasn’t like what happened to Martin Luther King, he was taken from us at a young age, Mandela lived in his 90s. It was a celebration of life, people want to be seen with the president.

Now if you are wondering what Steve Harvey’s end goal is after being a successful comedian, author of several books, host of Family Feud and his own talk show, he cites Oprah as inspiration for where he wants to be:

A little Oprah is my goal. That is what I’m trying to do.