In an exclusive interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Ellen DeGeneres has announced that the next season of her talk show will be the last.
In an exclusive interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Ellen DeGeneres has announced that the upcoming 19th season of her talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, will be the last. Despite the tumultuous year that the show has had, DeGeneres says that the move had been some time in the making, and that working on it was not a “challenge” anymore.
“When you’re a creative person, you constantly need to be challenged – and as great as this show is, and as fun as it is, it’s just not a challenge anymore,” she told the Hollywood Reporter.
According to reports, DeGeneres had been thinking of slowing down since 2018 with support from her wife. Executive at Warner Bros. and her brother, however, urged her to continue. She acquiesced, but only for three more years.
“I was going to stop after season 16. That was going to be my last season and they wanted to sign for four more years and I said I’d sign for maybe for one. They were saying there was no way to sign for one. “We can’t do that with the affiliates and the stations need more of a commitment.” So, we [settled] on three more years and I knew that would be my last.” she tells the Hollywood Reporter.
The talk show that ruled daytime for almost two decades, however, hasn’t been without its troughs. In July of last year, an expose by Buzzfeed News revealed a culture of abuse and toxicity behind the scenes. Allegations made by current and former employees included people being fired after taking sick days or bereavement leaves, facing racial comments and micro-aggressions, and being told to limit contact with DeGeneres and the guests. The story also came on the heels of a Twitter thread by comedian Kevin T. Porter, where he asked people to share “insane stories you’ve heard about Ellen being mean”.
DeGeneres addressed both in the interview, albeit also adding that the current social culture does not allow for people to ‘make mistakes:’ “With the talk show, all I cared about was spreading kindness and compassion and everything I stand for was being attacked. So, it destroyed me, honestly.”
Love Film & TV?
Get the latest Film & TV news, features, updates and giveaways straight to your inbox Learn more
“Then, on the heels of it, there are allegations of a toxic workplace and, unfortunately, I learned that through the press.” she continued. “So, there was an internal investigation, obviously, and we learned some things but this culture we’re living is [is one where] no one can make mistakes. And I don’t want to generalize because there are some bad people out there and those people shouldn’t work again but, in general, the culture today is one where you can’t learn and grow, which is, as human beings, what we’re here to do.”
“And I can see people looking at that going, “You don’t care about what people [went through.]” I care tremendously. It broke my heart when I learned that people here had anything other than a fantastic experience — that people were hurt in any way.” she told the Hollywood Reporter.
“I check in now as much as I can through Zoom to different departments and I make sure people know that if there’s ever a question or ever anything, they can come to me and I don’t know why that was never considered before. I’m not a scary person. I’m really easy to talk to. So, we’ve all learned from things that we didn’t realize — or I didn’t realize — were happening. I just want people to trust and know that I am who I appear to be.” she said.
You can read more about this topic over at the Film & TV Observer.
