Ellen DeGeneres on Wednesday night spoke publicly about the “devastating” experience she went through amid allegations of a toxic work environment on her talk show, saying the last few years have taken “such a toll on my ego and my self-esteem.”
The 66-year-old comic was appearing on stage in Los Angeles for the first show of her “Ellen’s Last Stand… Up Tour.” She opened the performance by saying that she “used to say that I didn’t care what other people thought of me” and then realized she was saying that “at the height of my popularity,” according to Rolling Stone.
DeGeneres’ act contained material about what she’d been doing since the cancelation of her Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2022. “What else can I tell you?” she said. “Oh yeah, I got kicked out of show business.”
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She was referring to the fallout from an explosive 2020 BuzzFeed News report in which employees on her talk show made claims about negative experiences they’d had with executive producers, including allegations of sexual misconduct and racism. DeGeneres made an on-air apology and three senior producers were fired, but she announced the following year, in May 2021, that the show would be coming to an end.
In her stand-up show Wednesday, DeGeneres reflected on how she became the “most hated person in America,” according to People, and said: “The hate went on for a long time and I would try to avoid looking at the news.” “The ‘be kind’ girl wasn’t kind,” she added. “That was the headline.”
DeGeneres was making reference to her habit of ending shows by saying “be kind to one another.” “I became this one-dimensional character who gave stuff away and danced up steps,” she said, Rolling Stone reports, joking that: “Had I ended my show by saying, ‘Go fuck yourself,’ people would’ve been pleasantly surprised.”
“It’s been such a toll on my ego and my self-esteem,” DeGeneres said. “There’s such extremes in this business, people either love you and idolize you or they hate you, and those people somehow are louder.”
She also explained how the ordeal had also affected her wife, Portia de Rossi, and that they had both been “just laying low for a while.” “Honestly, I’m making jokes about what happened to me but it was devastating, really,” DeGeneres said.
