The athlete gave an emotional interview to Oprah set  to air over two nights, Thursday and Friday

(Yahoo!) - Everyone's buzzing online over Lance Armstrong’s  huge sit-down interview with Oprah that begins airing this week. Winfrey announced Tuesday morning that she got so much  great material from the disgraced athlete that the interview would now run over  two nights, Thursday and Friday on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).

Winfrey herself immediately began teasing her legion of followers about what  they could expect. Right after the interview concluded on Tuesday at Armstrong’s  Austin, Texas, home, she tweeted, “Just wrapped with @lancearmstrong More than 2  1/2 hours. He came READY!”

Winfrey made an appearance on Tuesday morning on best friend  Gayle King’s morning show, “CBS This Morning,” to preview the one-on-one with  Armstrong. "The entire interview was difficult," she explained. Armstrong "did  not come clean in the manner that I expected," and continued that this was  "surprising to me ... my team, all of us in the room ... I feel that he answered  the questions in a way that he was ready."

"A couple of times he was emotional … Emotional doesn't begin to describe the  intensity of the difficulty that I think he experienced in talking about some of  these things," Winfrey continued. "All of the people who are wondering if he  actually goes there ... I think that you will come away too understanding that  he brought it, he really did."

Winfrey also went into detail about how she extended her vacation in Maui to  meet with Armstrong and negotiate the interview. “I stayed over [in Hawaii] an  extra two days in order to accommodate his schedule and he came to visit me in  Maui," she said. She went on to explain that she went so far as “clearing out” her house of guests and sending car services with unidentified drivers to pick  Armstrong up so that the activity wouldn’t be recognized as being associated  with the talk show queen.

And the Yahoo! searches show that interest in Winfrey and Armstrong are  through the roof. Searches on Armstrong are up 371% on Monday alone.

READ MORE: Yahoo!

Photo Credit Getty Images