Ellen DeGeneres show ending: 5 takeaways from 'Today' chat

May 13, 2021 9:44 AM PT

Ellen DeGeneres is standing firm in her stance that she’s ending “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” not because of last summer’s toxic workplace scandal but simply because it’s time to go. In fact, she wanted to call it quits years ago.

No matter, she says, that four months of media coverage of the allegations felt both “misogynistic” and “coordinated.”

“If it was why I was quitting, I would’ve not have come back this year,” DeGeneres told Savannah Guthrie in an interview that aired Thursday on “Today,” just a day after news broke that her show will wrap in 2022. (DeGeneres will also speak with fellow daytime veteran Oprah Winfrey about her exit in an interview airing later Thursday.)

“I really did think about not coming back, because it did, you know, it was devastating. I am a kind person. I am a person who likes to make people happy,” DeGeneres said on “Today.”

Still, DeGeneres remains proud of what she and her staff and crew have pulled off for so many years.

“I’m proud that we are funny,” she said. “I’m proud that we are helpful to people and that we represent acts of kindness and highlighting people that we want to say, look at this person doing good.”

Here are five key takeaways from the “Today” interview.

DeGeneres has really enjoyed doing the talk show

“This show has been the greatest experience of my life. And I owe it all to you,” DeGeneres said, choking back tears, in the monologue that will air later Thursday on her show.

When Guthrie asked how she managed to pull off such success, the standup comic was quick with a quip.

“You’re right. I am more talented than the rest,” she said, getting a laugh. “I just, I wanted you to say it.”

But DeGeneres followed up with a real explanation, saying, “I’m kind of made for this. I’m quick on my feet. I know what it’s like as a comedian to read the room.”

She also said she was really glad she got to break the news of the show ending to her staff and crew in her own words first, rather than having them learn about it via the internet. (Allegedly the news got pushed up after it was leaked to the Daily Mail. DeGeneres confirmed it to the Hollywood Reporter in a story that ran Wednesday.)

She still doesn’t understand what happened last summer

DeGeneres said she was caught off guard by the scandal that brewed last year, kicked off by a Twitter thread in late March soliciting horror stories about her and then followed in April by reports from crew members and staff that the show’s producers were ignoring them during the COVID-19 crisis.

Then, in July, came the allegations of a toxic environment in the “Ellen” workplace. An internal investigation by Warner Bros. Entertainment followed, and in August three top executives were fired.

“I really didn’t understand it,” DeGeneres told Guthrie. “I still don’t understand it. It was too orchestrated. It was too coordinated. And people get picked on, but for four months straight for me? ... And then for me to read in the press about a toxic work environment, when all I’ve ever heard from every guest that comes on the show is what a happy atmosphere this is and what a happy place it is?”

Criticism at the time of the investigation was harsh. One former employee told BuzzFeed in July, “That ‘be kind’ bulls— only happens when the cameras are on. It’s all for show. I know they give money to people and help them out, but it’s for show.”

She didn’t know what was happening on her set

“I had no idea. Never saw anything that would even point to that,” she told Guthrie.

DeGeneres said she didn’t know how she could have known what was going on “when there’s 255 employees here and there are a lot of different buildings. Unless I literally stayed here until the last person goes home at night.”

Still, she said that with her name on the show it falls on her to stand up and say things won’t be tolerated.

She just wishes, she said, that someone had told her what was going on.

DeGeneres addressed the situation in her season-opening monologue in September, saying at the time: “As you may have heard, this summer, there were allegations of a toxic work environment at our show, and then there was an investigation. I learned that things happened here that never should have happened. I take that very seriously, and I want to say I am so sorry to the people who were affected.”

She’s human. Just ask her therapist

“No, I’m not bulletproof,” DeGeneres told Guthrie, “and no, I don’t have a thick skin. I’m extremely sensitive to the point [where] it’s not healthy how sensitive I am.”

She said her therapist told her that very few people go through “such public humiliation” twice in a lifetime, referring to the recent scandal as well as what the host endured after coming out publicly as a lesbian in 1997.

“She was making me aware that I’m supposed to experience this for a bigger reason,” DeGeneres said. “How can I be an example of strength and perseverance and power if I give up and run away? So it really is one of the reasons I came back. I worked really hard on myself.

“And also, I have to say, if nobody else is saying it,” she continued, “it was really interesting because I’m a woman, and it did feel very misogynistic.”

She has an astrologer — apparently a very good one

DeGeneres said her astrologer told her, back when she was on the outs in Hollywood, that when she hit 45 she was going to embark on a new career that would go 20 years if she wanted it to.

“I was like, first of all, what woman starts over at 45, and what sitcom goes 20 years. I didn’t even think of a talk show,” DeGeneres said.

The comic, 63, started “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” when she was 45.

While people have asked her why she doesn’t want to end after two decades rather than 19 years, she said, who cares about round numbers? Nineteen is good enough for her, after extending her contract past Season 16, which was the first year she thought about ending the series.

And no, she hasn’t asked the astrologer yet about what comes next.

“This is all just happening,” DeGeneres said.