Oprah, Sarah and the Girls

Here’s the single promo shot Oprah’s production company released to the media. What it shows is four women who are thoroughly experienced posing for a camera. If there is a curious element, it’s the unusually tight grip Oprah has on Sarah and Willow — reflective, perhaps, of Oprah keeping everyone close having scored the first interview of circus week. …Not so curious, but mesmerizing, is the competing intensity for the lens Sarah and Oprah emit with those gazes. Ah, star power.

But then, I was also interested in this screen shot I grabbed from a cut-away while Willow and Piper listened to Mom discuss how the decision to accept the Veep offer — uncharacteristically omitting the kids, Palin adds — was made.

If you watch the video, you see how conscious Willow is of being on set, shifting her eyes, for a split second, toward the camera. And then there’s Piper, who is unselfconsciously engrossed by Mom’s discussion, but, in a different way, seems to recognize the stakes in all this. Considering the breezy and bemused expressions on the faces of the two other women, the tension in the Palin girls — the most pleasing extras in the Palin Show — is more than palpable.

(images: Harpo Productions)