While we’ve become used to fuzzy screens, dodgy sound and even unexpected guests during most TV interviews filmed during the pandemic, that simply won’t do for Oprah Winfrey.

Well, the queen of chat did have a rather special guest on the latest episode of The Oprah Conversation, and so pulled out all the stops.

As you would for Barack Obama, wouldn’t you?

Despite being filmed thousands of miles apart on separate coasts of America, thanks to the wonders of very modern technology, it looks like Oprah and the former US president are having a cosy fireside chat.

Wow.

Obama, who was chatting about his new memoir, A Promised Land, was actually in a studio in Washington, D.C., and Oprah was at home in Santa Barbara. 

“Through the miracle of technology, we get to be face-to-face in the same room, and we don’t have to wear a mask,” Oprah says in the episode’s opening sequence. President Obama adds: “We have a fire going, apparently!”

As well as chatting about their mutual love of The Crown, our favourite moment comes when Obama initiates a game of virtual footsie with Oprah.

Cuuuute!

Even though things look super cosy next to the crackling fire, Obama joked that he would have been happIier if their surroundings had been a little more “out there”. Like waaaay out there.

“We should have done this in outer space,” he jokes in the episode. “We could have both been sitting on Neptune, in a bubble!”

The full interview is available to watch on Apple TV now.