In 2020, Ellen DeGeneres found herself at the center of a surprising scandal.
Ellen was accused of creating a hostile workplace where employees were mistreated, overworked and pitted against each other in a hellishly competitive environment.
Shortly after the allegations became public, Ellen’s talk show ended after 19 years.
The embattled comedian kept a low profile for a while after hosting her final episode.
But now she has returned to her roots with a new standup tour.
The tour kicked off with a show in West Hollywood on Wednesday night, and as expected, Ellen made some candid comments about the scandal that ended her television career (at least for now).
Ellen DeGeneres tells the audience she was “kicked out of show business.”
“What else can I tell you? “Oh yeah, I got kicked out of show business,” DeGeneres told the sold-out audience during the show Rolling Stone.
“There are no bad people in show business,” she added with more than a hint of sarcasm.
From then on, Ellen poked fun at the gap between her public image and the way she was described by her former co-workers.
As you may recall, Ellen always ended her show by urging viewers to “be kind to one another” – words of wisdom that she allegedly didn’t follow when dealing with her employees.
“The ‘Be Nice’ girl wasn’t nice,” she joked onstage this week.
“I became this one-dimensional character, giving things away and dancing up steps. Do you know how hard it is to dance up steps?” The comic continued.
“Would a mean person dance up steps? If I had ended my show by saying, “Fuck yourself,” people would have been pleasantly surprised.”
Ellen later addressed the scandal more seriously, telling the audience that she was a boss who “didn’t know how to be a boss” despite being the face of the show.
“I didn’t go to business school. “I went to Charlie’s Chuckle Hutt,” she joked.
“The show was called Ellen and everyone wore T-shirts that said ‘Ellen’ and there were buildings on the Warner Brothers lot that said ‘Ellen,’ but I don’t know that meant I should be in charge .”
It may not have been the apology some of Ellen’s former co-workers were hoping for.
But it seems the former daytime host is aware she messed up – and she deserves credit for admitting it publicly.