Ellen DeGeneres attends the premiere of Netflix’s “Green Eggs And Ham” at Hollywood American Legion on November 3, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images)
Before Ellen DeGeneres abruptly canceled four upcoming dates of her stand-up tour, including one in San Francisco, she told a Santa Rosa audience on July 1 that “this is the last time you’ll see me,” saying she was “saying goodbye” and retiring after being “kicked out of show business for being mean.”
“After my Netflix special, I’m done,” DeGeneres said during a Q&A on the show, SFGate reported. She was referring to a Netflix presentation of her “Ellen’s Last Stand…Up Tour,” which is set to premiere on the streaming platform later this year. DeGeneres, however, is still scheduled to perform in San Francisco on July 20 and continue her tour in other cities through August.
Yet DeGeneres’s complaints about being “kicked out of show business” are a reminder of her precipitous fall from grace in the spring and summer of 2020, and how it all began with a single tweet. That tweet was followed by a searing investigative story on Buzzfeed News and an internal investigation into her eponymous talk show, all of which damaged her multimillion-dollar global brand built on her “be kind” persona.
The Buzzfeed article describes how DeGeneres’ show became a toxic workplace where she played favorites and employees faced “racism, fear, and intimidation” and were told not to speak to the star if they saw her in the office. DeGeneres apologized that summer. But the following spring, she announced she would end her show the following year, after its 19th season.
But before the Buzzfeed report and internal investigation, DeGeneres’ reputation appears to have been damaged by this tweet, according to the Daily Mail. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when everyone was in fear and in lockdown, comedian and podcaster Kevin T. Porter took to X, back when Twitter was famous, to ask people to share their “craziest stories they’ve heard about how mean Ellen is.”
“Right now, we all need a little kindness,” Porter said on X. “You know, like Ellen DeGeneres always talks about!”
“She’s also known for being one of the meanest people in the world,” Porter continued. “Reply to that with the craziest stories you’ve ever heard on Ellen and I’ll donate $2 to @LAFoodBank for each of them.”
Perhaps because people had little else to do, Porter’s post was flooded with more than 2,000 responses from people, many of whom claimed to have had unpleasant encounters with DeGeneres, or heard reasonable second-hand accounts of others being treated with disdain, or worse.
“Working for her I was told I couldn’t look her in the eye and was never supposed to say hello first,” one person tweeted, adding that they were also told the star “definitely wouldn’t say hello to me first.”
“I can’t guarantee that something is ‘real’ if it didn’t happen to me, but this is as close as I can get,” another person wrote. “My friend who worked at Real Food Daily said Ellen came in and had dinner and when she saw her waitress had a chipped nail, Ellen called management and tried to get her fired.” Others said they knew fans who had unpleasant experiences while in the audience of the show or whose dishes they made were featured on the show without their names being mentioned.
Two days after posting his tweet, Porter said he was surprised by the response and acknowledged it was hard to tell whether some stories were “true or not.” But he said he had gathered about 300 plausible stories that DeGeneres had been mean and donated $600 to the Los Angeles Food Bank.
Porter’s tweet seemed to encourage people to direct more criticism at DeGeneres, especially after she filmed her April 6, 2020, show from her home, where she was in lockdown, the Daily Mail reported. Speaking to the camera from her multimillion-dollar estate, DeGeneres jokingly compared her situation to that of prisoners in jail. People took to social media to criticize her for being tone-deaf and out of touch with reality, pointing out that many Americans were dying and that most of the people watching her show were doing so in much smaller, less luxurious spaces.
The backlash against DeGeneres on social media has intensified, with people sharing clips from her show that, in retrospect, hinted at problematic behavior, the Daily Mail reported. This included DeGeneres’ embarrassing 2019 interview with actor Dakota Johnson. After DeGeneres insisted to Johnson that she hadn’t been invited to her recent birthday party, Johnson fired back, saying, “Actually, no, that’s not the truth, Ellen. You were invited.”
Johnson told DeGeneres that she made sure to invite her because the talk show host had complained that she wasn’t invited to her birthday party the last time she appeared on her show. “I didn’t even know you liked me,” Johnson said, “but I invited you, and you didn’t come.” When DeGeneres declined, Johnson told her, “Ask everybody. Ask Jonathan, your producer.”
Five years later, as DeGeneres announced her retirement, she used her time on stage at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa to address the reports of 2020 and draw dark humor from her experience facing her own version of cancel culture. She said she’s been kicked out of show business before — in 1998, when her sitcom “Ellen” was canceled after she came out.
“Next time I’m going to get fired because I’m old. Old, gay and mean, the triple crown,” DeGeneres joked, according to SFGate. She acknowledged that she can be “demanding, impatient and tough” and “a strong woman.”
But DeGeneres ultimately refuted the accusations that ruined her career. She told the crowd: “I am many things, but I am not evil.”
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