A former Ellen producer, Hedda Muskat has spoken in an exclusive interview on Sunrise, reflecting on what it was like to work on the show. And boy she did not hold back. I’m just surprised she wasn’t popping bottles during it.
Following the toxic workplace allegations behind the scenes of the Ellen show and subsequent decline in ratings, Ellen DeGeneres announced today that the show will be no more.
Muskat began by saying that the news doesn’t come as a shock at all. “The viewers have spoken. Her ratings have been in the toilet for a long long time now. Her show has not been fun, it has not been interesting, and she’s not really, by the way, stepping down, the viewers fired her.”
She continued, “I think the viewers are disappointed in the phoniness that she’s been projecting, as this nice person. So I feel that they, the viewers feel duped in a way that she’s not this nice person, and the viewers are not going to put up with the backstage racism that goes on, and the backstage bullying that goes on. So I think the viewers have woken up.”
Muskat was first hired back in 2003 to work as the show’s human interest booker, aka the non-celebrities. She recalled, that when they all sat down for the production meetings, Degeneres included, she would show no interested in the news breaking stories and that she “looked away”.
She said, “She really showed a despise for a lot of my people that we were pitching to her… we had to walk on eggshells with her because when we would be pitching her snide remarks would be, ‘what am I going to talk to them about, I don’t know, I have nothing to say, I don’t know.’”
“So we would write the whole outline for her, and then the guests would walk off feeling like crap, so it wasn’t goodwill for the show. However, she loved kissing ass with all the celebrities and she really was not in a position to interview the real people because she really couldn’t carry a conversation with them.”
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"She’s not really stepping down, the viewers fired her"
Former The Ellen DeGeneres Show Producer @HeddaMuskat delivers a fiery spray against the comedian after she announced the end of her long-running talk show. pic.twitter.com/Co7wOUAkkj
— Sunrise (@sunriseon7) May 12, 2021