After all, Oprah by no diagram doubted the all-female expedition, which furthermore integrated the likes of Katy Perry and Lauren Sánchez.

“She persistently acknowledged I modified into as soon as gonna be OK,” Gayle added. “And Oprah is conscious of things.”

Meanwhile, Gayle’s initial hesitation relating to the voyage modified into as soon as neatly-known—so great so, if fact be told, that her facial functions as she boarded the spacecraft spawned a viral web meme.

“At that moment I modified into as soon as so disquieted, I just valid wished to web into my seat as a result of I just valid wished to let the coaching kick in,” she explained at a files conference after the immediate flight. “I just valid wished to web for the length of the tablet and sit down down, so the strategy of walking up there modified into as soon as barely of daunting for me.”

But barely of apprehension wasn’t ample to deter Gayle from blasting off.

“I knew that I modified into as soon as persistently going to fabricate it,” she acknowledged in the course of an Oprah Day-to-day interview April 14. “Although, we were told, ‘When you’re going to back out, you’ve got got to fabricate so before 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Or no longer it is miles a have to to mutter, ‘I’m no longer going to fly.’ But getting on, it modified into as soon as barely of horrifying. So the memes demonstrate that I modified into as soon as worried.”

Support scrolling to demand more stars who walked the red carpet on the TIME100 gala.

—Reporting by Emily Curl