Steph Deschamps / May 13, 2021
The host and comedian Ellen DeGeneres will end her TV talk show in 2022, she announced in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter site published Wednesday, while the show, plagued by a controversy, has seen its ratings drop.
After breaking through as a comedian during the 1980s, Ellen DeGeneres rose to fame with the series Ellen (1994-1998), during which she became, in 1997, the first main character of a television series to reveal her homosexuality.
The host, who is a lesbian and married to actress Portia de Rossi, assures that the decision to end her talk show is not related to the controversy that arose last year around the show, on the air since 2003.
In July, alumni of the program had questioned the management in an article on the site BuzzFeed and reported a toxic work environment.
Ellen DeGeneres was not directly accused, but she was accused of having allowed this atmosphere to develop within her team.
A few days later, actor Brad Garrett, a guest on the show six times, had, for his part, taken the plunge in a tweet: I know more than one that she has treated horribly. Everyone knows it. A statement echoed by comedian Leah Thompson.
The controversy was all the more devastating because Ellen DeGeneres has built her talk show on the values of kindness and humanity, to the point of adopting Be Kind as her slogan.
After long weeks of silence, and the rumor of a cancellation, the host had apologized for the behavior of some of his collaborators, but refuted any deviation on a personal level.
If I had to leave the show because of that, I wouldn't have come back this season, she said in the interview published Wednesday. So that's not why I'm quitting.
Since September, the show's audience, which is broadcast in the middle of the afternoon, has dropped sharply and now only attracts about 1.2 million viewers, compared to more than twice that number last season.
The talk show is a financial windfall for Ellen DeGeneres, who co-produces it.
Last year, the short-haired 60-year-old in the perennial pantsuit earned $84 million, largely from her TV show, making her the 12th-highest earning celebrity in the world, according to Forbes magazine.