“We owe her the dignity of telling the truth not repeating myths,” the singer’s sister-in-law posted on Instagram.

Pat Houston blasts Oprah Winfrey’s claim that Whitney Houston fell off stage after drug relapse

"We owe her the dignity of telling the truth not repeating myths," the singer's sister-in-law posted on Instagram.

By Mekishana Pierre

Mekishana Pierre

Mekishana Pierre is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2025. Her work has previously appeared on Entertainment Tonight and Popsugar.

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June 24, 2026 1:29 p.m. ET

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Pat Houston in Los Angeles on Feb. 1; Whitney Houston performing in 1998; Oprah Winfrey in Philadelphia on June 17. Credit:

Johnny Nunez/Getty; Jon Super/Redferns; Astrida Valigorsky/Getty

- Pat Houston has responded to Oprah Winfrey's claim that late singer Whitney Houston fell off stage due to drug use during a performance on *The Oprah Winfrey Show*.

- Winfrey made the bombshell claim during a sit-down conversation at Cannes Lions on Tuesday, where she received the festival’s LionHeart Award.

- "Like many people, she faced personal battles, but it is inaccurate and unfair to attach that struggle to every performance or every chapter of her life," Pat said of her late sister-in-law.

Pat Houston is speaking out after Oprah Winfrey claimed that late icon Whitney Houston fell off stage during an emotional performance on her self-titled talk show. Winfrey blamed the incident, which occurred during Houston's final appearance on the talk show in 2009, on the singer's drug relapse.

Pat, who was Whitney's close friend and sister-in law and now serves as her estate executor, took to social media to share her thoughts on Winfrey's recent claim, which she slammed as an "inaccurate and unfair" recollection of the events.

"From the 2009 interview on the *Oprah Winfrey Show*, Whitney absolutely fell off 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 began in the caption of her Instagram post Tuesday. "She was absolutely not high."

Although Pat noted that the allegation was "picked up by several media outlets," she didn't shy away from acknowledging Whitney's struggles with addiction. They ultimately led to the singer's untimely death, following an accidental drowning in 2012. She was 48.

Whitney Houston performing in 1994.

Jim Steinfeldt/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

"Like many people, [Whitney] faced personal battles, but it is inaccurate and unfair to attach that struggle to every performance or every chapter of her life," Pat wrote. "What the studio audience witnessed on stage was the result of discipline, talent, and commitment not the assumptions others project."

She concluded her message, writing, "Whitney’s humanity included triumphs and struggles, but on that day, she showed up as the professional and gifted artist she always worked to be. We owe her the dignity of telling the truth not repeating myths."

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Winfrey shared her claim during a Cannes Lions presentation on Tuesday, in which she recalled Whitney's final appearance on her show from September 2009, which included an emotional performance of the Diane Warren–penned ballad "I Didn't Know My Own Strength."

The song was included on what would be her final studio album, *I Look to You *— which rocketed 77 percent in sales back to the top two on the *Billboard* 200 following the performance Winfrey referenced in her Cannes Lions presentation.

"I had such trust from the *Oprah *show audience that Whitney did, I think, what was her last show with us. She had gone back on drugs," Winfrey told the Cannes Lions audience. "The first interview I did with her when we'd gone behind stage and I asked about her intentions, she was clean. But the day she came to my show to perform in front of the audience, she was not, and she fell off of the stage."

Whitney Houston performing during the 2004 World Music Awards.

Pascal Le Segretain/Getty

Winfrey said she had to think quickly to prevent the story from getting out in an effort to, as she recalled, protect Houston's fragile state at the time.

"I knew that if that story got out that she'd fallen off the stage, that she would be completely destroyed by that," Winfrey shared. "Even though the audience was there and the audience had cameras, I begged them not to put those pictures up because it would ruin her life, and they did not."

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