Poor Oprah. She feels she was duped. Just two weeks ago she was calling into Larry King Live to voice her support for James Frey and his memoir titled A Million Little Pieces saying that the questions over whether Frey fabricated large portions of the book were “much ado about nothing.” Today she had Frey back on her show and confronted him about the accusations:

NEW YORK - In a stunning switch from dismissive to disgusted, Oprah Winfrey took on one of her chosen authors, James Frey, accusing him on live television of lying about “A Million Little Pieces” and letting down the many fans of his memoir of addiction and recovery.

“I feel duped,” she said Thursday on her syndicated talk show. “But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers.”

Frey, who found himself booed in the same Chicago studio where he had been embraced not long ago, acknowledged that he had lied.

A sometimes angry, sometimes tearful Winfrey asked Frey why he “felt the need to lie.” Audience members often groaned and gasped at Frey’s halting, stuttered admissions that certain facts and characters had been “altered” but that the essence of his memoir was real.

“I don’t think it is a novel,” Frey said of his book, which had initially been offered to publishers, and rejected by many, as fiction. “I still think it’s a memoir.”

Well I still think of myself as an international super hero admired by millions and sought after by women, but that don’t mean it’s true.

So for the moment it appears that Frey’s career is now in a Million Little Pieces, but it doesn’t really matter. He’s made some decent pocket change off his little ruse and even if he never has another book published he probably won’t be hurting for money anytime soon. Unless he’s stupid enough to squander it. In which case he’ll be ripe for a new book about his rise and fall which will undoubtedly be another Oprah Book Club selection once it’s published.