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Ellen DeGeneres
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After nearly 18 years on air, Ellen DeGeneres is calling it quits. The talk show host plans to end The Ellen DeGeneres Show with Season 19 in 2022, The Hollywood Reporter reports. DeGeneres made the decision May 11, and will further discuss the end of her show with Oprah Winfrey on the May 13 episode.
“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 THR. DeGeneres’ exit comes after the host and comedian nearly ended her show with Season 16. While DeGeneres was planning on making that her last season, Warner Bros. wanted her to sign for four more years, she said. In the end, “we [settled] on three more years and I knew that would be my last,” DeGeneres explained.
The end of The Ellen Show comes after a summer of controversy for both DeGeneres and her eponymous show, with employees coming forward with accusations of a toxic workplace rife with favoritism, microaggressions, and sexual harassment. Buzzfeed News first reported the story, which led to months of backlash to the Ellen Show, which has long touted a “Be Kind” motto. The allegations sparked an investigation into the show by Warner Bros., which resulted in the firing of three top producers.
When asked by THR if last summer’s events influenced her decision to end The Ellen Show, DeGeneres admitted that “It almost impacted the show,” and that “It was very hurtful to me.” She denied that she’s stopping because of the controversy, explaining that if she were to quit the show over the accusations, she wouldn’t have returned for the current season.
“It’s not why I’m stopping but it was hard because I was sitting at home, it was summer, and I see a story that people have to chew gum before they talk to me and I’m like, ‘Okay, this is hilarious.’ Then I see another story of some other ridiculous thing and then it just didn’t stop,” she said. “And I wasn’t working, so I had no platform, and I didn’t want to address it on [Twitter] and I thought if I just don’t address it, it’s going to go away because it was all so stupid.”
DeGeneres added, “It destroyed me, honestly. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t. And it makes me really sad that there’s so much joy out there from negativity.” Speaking directly about the investigation, she said it “broke my heart when I learned that people here had anything other than a fantastic experience.” Since then, she says she’s made an effort to “check in now as much as I can through Zoom” with her employees. “I’m not a scary person,” she insisted. “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.”
Now that her show is coming to an end, DeGeneres is still mulling over her next move. “I have some ideas but my agent is just like, ‘Why don’t you just sit still for a minute. You probably don’t even know how exhausted you are and what it’s going to be like to sit still,'” she said. “I wouldn’t have thought I was ever going to do a talk show when I stopped doing movies and sitcoms. I thought that that was the only path. And then all of a sudden there was a talk show that took me on this 19-year journey.”
The Ellen DeGeneres Show airs weekdays at 3/2c on NBC.
