Ellen DeGeneres took a moment to acknowledge the controversy that surrounded her talk show, Ellen, when it concluded in May 2022.
She is currently on a comedy tour called Ellen’s Last Stand … Up. During her stop in Los Angeles on Wednesday, DeGeneres joked that she was “kicked out of show business” for being “mean,” according to People.
Her comments referenced the public allegations of a toxic workplace that came out ahead of the talk show’s end. She continued in her comedy routine that she became the “most hated person in America,” following the countless headlines that came out about her when the story broke.
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“The hate went on for a long time, and I would try to avoid looking at the news,” she recalled, per People, noting that she used to end her talk show each day by saying, “Be kind to one another.” “The ‘be kind’ girl wasn’t kind,” she added in her routine. “That was the headline.”
By prompting people to be nice to one another, DeGeneres joked that it became a “problem” since people began to think of her as a “one-dimensional character who gave stuff away and danced up steps.”
After her set ended, she held a Q&A session for fans in the audience. One of the attendees asked her if she continued to “dance” during the tough times following the allegations, and she said she wasn’t able to because she was so hurt over the claims.
“No … It’s hard to dance when you’re crying,” she said, adding that she “had a hard time” with everything and “didn’t get out” as the scandal was happening. She also noted that she was “in a funk” that started affecting her wife, Portia de Rossi. “She was watching it happen to me … she went through it with me,” she said of de Rossi.
At the time, DeGeneres said she laid low and became “persona non grata” for the second time since she came out as gay in 1997. Since then, however, with the help of her wife, she has started to dance again.
“I’m making jokes about what happened to me, but it was devastating,” she said. “It took a long time for me to want to do anything again,” noting that she “hated the way the show ended” because she “loved that show so much.” She also added that she didn’t want her time on the show to be tainted by the public’s negative perception of her.
The Emmy-winning host concluded by sharing with the crowd that she was happy to be back onstage and providing some “joy” during “a scary time” to live. “I think that we need more laughter and less drama,” she said.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter after she had wrapped production on the final Ellen episode, DeGeneres explained that she had to “trust that whatever happened during that time, which was obviously very, very difficult, happened for a reason.
“I think that I learned a lot, and there were some things that came up that I was shocked and surprised by. It was eye-opening,” she said, adding, “but I just trust that that had to happen.”
