Rolling Stone did a profile of Ellen DeGeneres back in April, tracking her first stand up show in two years, which was also the first since hosting her talk show. The Ellen DeGeneres Show ended in May 2022 in subdued fashion rather than dance party energy, as it came after years of revelations of the show having a toxic work environment. Rolling Stone’s account of her new stand up portrayed Ellen as still very much processing the fallout, just now publicly through her comedy after a couple quiet years. It seemed like the stand up tour — one night of which will be filmed for a Netflix special — could be an opportunity for Ellen, if she rises to it, to be funny and honest, hopefully leading to real accountability. Now Page Six has spoken to some “friends” of Ellen’s, who are sharing more light on the comeback she’s staging:
A comedy comeback: Ellen DeGeneres dubbed herself “the most hated person in America” and has deliberately spent the past two years out of the spotlight. But she’s now making a comeback with what she claims will be one final Netflix special and a comedy tour called “Ellen’s Last Stand… Up.” After battling toxic workplace allegations related to “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” the star — who has a reported net worth of $450 million — is ready to talk in detail about the downfall of her Emmy-winning daytime series. “She needed some time to recover,” a longtime DeGeneres friend told Page Six. “But she’s an artist, she wants to entertain — she can’t just sit at home.”
Be kind, rewind: Back in 2020, DeGeneres, 66 — whose catchphrase is “Be Kind — became embroiled in a scandal that hit at the very heart of her longtime show. Staffers accused the comedian of fostering a culture of racism, fear and intimidation — and of demanding that no one on set make eye contact with her. Guests were allegedly told to compliment her on air. DeGeneres replied to this by telling employees, “I don’t know where it started. Please talk to me. Look me in the eye.”
The peccadillo defense: Since the show ended in May 2022, DeGeneres has spent her time flipping very expensive houses in Santa Barbara, looking after her rescue chickens gardening and focusing on the gorilla conservation campus that was founded in her honor in Rwanda. … However, when asked about the return to stand up, another old friend told us, “Ellen is a comedian. They all have their peccadillos, but this is her life and she wants to talk about everything she went through and where she is now in her life, sharing who she is. Look at Jerry Seinfeld, he does stand-up all the time. Why shouldn’t she get back on stage?”
You gotta have friends: She will film her Netflix special in Minneapolis in August. It will be produced by Ben Winston, the Emmy-winning business partner of James Corden, who also made the “Friends” reunion special. It will be DeGeneres’ first comedy special since 2018’s “Relatable.” She also had celebrity pals including Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, Khloe Kardashian and Kris Jenner support her at another show at Largo last week.
‘Let’s see how this goes’: “Ellen has spent a lot of time writing and working on something very funny,” said the old friend. “The bottom line is that for her own soul she needs to work and to entertain people.” … “I used to say that I didn’t care what other people thought of me and I realized … I said that at the height of my popularity,” DeGeneres said, prompting laughter at a gig in April. “Right now I’m hoping you’re thinking, ‘This is marvelous, I’m so happy to be here.’ But you could be thinking, ‘Let’s see how this goes.’”
I’m sorry, fostering a constant atmosphere of casual cruelty is substantially more than having a few “picadillos.” And then that “friend” goes on to compare Ellen’s comeback to Jerry Seinfeld?! Hilarious for us, but that’s definitely not the flex this person thinks it is. As I said above, I think the ball is in Ellen’s court now, in terms of the level of candor she allows for in the material. Some of what we heard back in April was not quite there yet, in my opinion. But stand up is a live medium, and she should have ample time to shape her set into a good special for Netflix. And I actually think “Let’s see how this goes” is a promising way to start.
Before leaving, can please we take a moment to appreciate the delicious absurdity of this sentence: “Since the show ended in May 2022, DeGeneres has spent her time flipping very expensive houses in Santa Barbara, looking after her rescue chickens, gardening and focusing on the gorilla conservation campus that was founded in her honor in Rwanda.” As one does, lol. It’s like a bio by Mad Libs.
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Ugh. This whole piece is about her “healing.” Bish, please. Telling staff to “please look me in the eye” doesn’t expel years of a toxic environment of “racism, fear and intimidation”. I still think about her staff, what they went through, and how are they recovering — especially the ones who got unjustly fired. As someone who has worked in multiple toxic environments, trauma is at least present after leaving the situation.
“But she’s an artist, she wants to entertain — she can’t just sit at home.”
–Yes, she can. She’s worth millions. She can stay home and entertain Portia and the rest of their friends with shadow puppet theater. That aside, there’s been no accountability on her part. But this Hollywood, so she’ll get away with it. She’ll do whatever she wants and still be toxic, just like Seinfeld and Corden.
She refers to herself as “the most hated person in America”? I guess she hasn’t learned any humility.
Hah!
That was the comment that first jumped out at me. Like, people saw behind the facade and didn’t like what they saw, sure. And her show ended.
But she’s nowhere near the center of other people’s universe to be the most hated person in a town, much less the whole country. That level of self-importance is off-putting and completely consistent with the stories of her demanding staffers don’t talk to her or look her in the eye. If that’s coming from her it doesn’t point to her having learned anything from her show’s collapse.
She’s not most hated; She just kind of became irrelevant to most people once she was out of the spotlight.
“her demanding staffers don’t talk to her or look her in the eye”
@North of Boston, did she demand that herself or was it other people working for her saying that? In one episode of Conan’s (O’Brien) podcast, he talked about that some producer warned his staffers not to talk to and look at him. He had no idea someone did that and learned about it later. Sometimes the hosts of these shows are in a bubble and producers are running everything.
But the hosts have no business being “in a bubble”. If they care about their name and reputation, they should be meeting/checking in with staff on a regular basis and should have an open door policy for staff members to air their concerns. And if Conan or Ellen or whoever can’t do that then HIRE someone specifically for this role. Do they not have an HR department? Feigning ignorance is a BS excuse at best. At worst, it’s indicative of someone who is very VERY removed from the goings-on that occurs on-set and behind-the-scenes. Get out of your damn ivory tower and get involved FFS.
Exactly. People were finally able to say “she’s not that nice and is unpleasant to work for” and that was pretty much it, and none of it was a shock to most as that had been whispered for years. And didn’t she choose to end her show?
Also, no one is stopping her from entertaining anyone. If she wants to do stand-up…go do it. If she wants to make something else…go make it. So much whining…
Seriously.
The amount of privilege in her comments is so gross. Lots of people want to be entertainers. I will always be grateful to Ellen for what she did for us. But, she was known to be abusive for YEARS.
I think that title belongs to Donald Trump.
So she sets a precedent where people on set are not allowed to look at her and is surprised that they won’t “look her in the eye” when they finally stop covering for her garbage behavior. Those people don’t owe her anything. I wish she would just stay gone from the limelight.
Best thing she could have done, PR wise, was disappear for a while and come back saying she did some therapy and soul searching.
It would have been great if she actually did any of those things.
It is weird so many people are remembering what happened in Ellen Show as Ellen did it. The show had bad producers and executives behind the scenes. They were the ones who created the toxic work environment. It happened to Kelly Clarkson show too. It seems to me, people already didn’t like Ellen very much and the expose gave them a solid reason because I didn’t see that much blame on Kelly.
Please. Was Ellen not present when people were cowering around her and not looking her in the eye? If I went to work and everyone looked away while talking to me I’d notice immediately.
It happened to so many famous people. The producers on their show are talking to the staff without the talent knowing about it. It happened to Conan, most recently Kelly. It happens in movie sets too. Ellen also said she had no idea about this, she didn’t ask anyone to do that for her. No one disputed that.
Well, i am no fan of Ellen, but we have 1 set of standards for women and another for men. This bugs me.
If Ellen was a guy, she would not get cancelled so I wanna support her. Yet, I do not want women to sink so low.
I am confused.
“If she wants to have her own show and have her name on the show title, she needs to be more involved to see what’s going on,” one former employee said. “I think the executive producers surround her and tell her, ‘Things are going great, everybody’s happy,’ and she just believes that, but it’s her responsibility to go beyond that.”
Straight from the Buzzfeed article and I think that says it all TBH.
@Kitten, I agree the boss is responsible party at the end of the day. But, what I am seeing is people commenting that Ellen did those things. She didn’t. I am repeating myself, but the same thing happened also on Kelly show. No one remembers it like Kelly did it.
The employees who work on The Ellen Show past and present have called out Ellen and her behavior for years. While the employees on Kelly Show had nothing but nice things to say about Kelly just that the
producers made it a toxic work environment.
Ellen was a toxic person and looked miserable on the show, and took that out on her employees.
@Lauren, I looked at past reporting. The employees said Ellen is the boss, she should have known. No one said she did those things. Please give me a source if I am wrong. Maybe there was additional reporting I missed?
Twitter her employees were posting there for years. Their was also how Ellen treated her staff during lockdown.
That absolutely does happen to famous people, their “staff” or whoever starts making ridiculous demands in their name, but with Ellen, there was a lot of stuff beyond just that.
This is the woman who fired someone for saying hello to her.
It’s crazy how narcissistic she is. She can’t just enjoy her multi-millions in obscurity–she simply MUST be back in all of our faces again. The Seinfeld comparison is very apt as both his comedy and her “Be Kind” schtick feel so dated and irrelevant, given our current sociopolitical climate.
Kitten, so well-said. They cannot handle that their time/tone/schtick is passed and passé.
I look forward to the day when someone who was toxic for years comes out and admits, “You know what? I was a dick. It was wrong. I’m sorry.” Will it automatically make everything better? No, but it’s certainly a better start than this “journey of healing” crap. Own up to your crap and maybe you’ll have a second act.
For my petty comment, Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, Khloe Kardashian and Kris Jenner are the celebrities supporting her? Reading that had me flashing back to the clip of JLo’s assistants telling her all these big names didn’t want to work with her.
She developed an entire skit around scaring the crap out of her guests. I’ve always known she was an asshole.
Just came here to say the same thing. She’d either scare them if they had a phobia or deliberately humiliate them (remember Dakota Johnson?) with some embarrassing put-down or accusation.
I used to like her show, but the interview segment and ‘fun games’ became a pretext to put participants in humiliating situations.
I can totally understand producers might have interpreted their own way her need for focus, personal space or whatever, but what her staffers said is very apt: The show carried her name, she was main producer, and she was responsible for fostering the right environment.
There’s a myriad of ways to ensure for it; from regular meetings to zero tolerance policies supported on unobstructed and speedy communication channels.
Exactly right about her using her position to humiliate her guests on air. Once you see her casual cruelty you can’t unsee it and it becomes so much easier to believe every bad thing that her staff said about her.
Girl bye. You want something to do then take up knitting, go hiking.
Maybe she shouldn’t have been such a huge C. U. Next. Tuesday to everyone around her. Sorry Ellen, that ship has sailed. Get a hobby. As a gameshow addict, I admit I liked parts of her gameshow. But she would definitely get this sadistic gleam in her eye when it came to “torturing” some of the contestants.
Three nights in Santa Rosa CA? Why does she hate us so much?
She better start a podcast. lol there is no room for her in DT tv anymore