Ellen DeGeneres, daytime TV queen, faces her critics
The queen of daytime TV was one of many celebrities to be ‘cancelled’ in 2020. Is there any way back for Ellen DeGeneres?
If Ellen DeGeneres had not ended her television show by urging the 15 million viewers in the US who watch her each week to “Be kind to one another”, things might well have been different. Over the past 17 years DeGeneres has reigned supreme as the queen of US daytime TV. The show’s mixture of celebrity interviews, “feel-good” guests and her amiable goofing – allied to her being a flag-bearer for the LGBT movement – has made her one of the most popular and powerful people in the entertainment industry. So it was a matter of more than embarrassment that in September, opening the first show in her 18th season, the “be kind lady” began with a seven-minute monologue addressing allegations she had presided over a “toxic” workplace where staff were subject to harassment and abuse – and that DeGeneres herself was actually not very kind at all.
In an article published on the internet news site BuzzFeed in July, one current and 10 former staff members, speaking anonymously, alleged that the work culture at DeGeneres’s show was one of “racism, fear and intimidation”. There were allegations that staff had been fired after taking medical leave or bereavement days to attend family funerals. One employee, fed up with comments about her race, had simply walked off the job. It was even claimed that staff had been instructed not to speak to DeGeneres unless they were spoken to first. “That ‘be kind’ bullshit only happens when the cameras are on,” one former employee told BuzzFeed. “It’s all for show.”
More damaging still were allegations by 36 former employees in a follow-up piece, describing the show as “a place where sexual harassment and misconduct by top executive producers runs rampant”. One executive producer was accused of asking an employee to perform oral sex in a bathroom at a company party in 2013 and of grabbing a production assistant by the penis, another of having “a reputation for being handsy with women” and managing “through fear and intimidation”.
In a letter of response to staff, DeGeneres wrote that she had vowed from the beginning to make her show a “place of happiness, where no one would ever raise their voice, and everyone would be treated with respect. Obviously, something changed, and I am disappointed to learn that this has not been the case. And for that, I am sorry.” Saying that she was “glad the issues” had been brought to her attention, she promised to do her “part” in “continuing to push myself and everyone around me to learn and grow”.
In August, following an investigation by the show’s parent company WarnerMedia, three of the show’s senior staff, producers Ed Glavin and Kevin Leman, and co-executive producer Jonathan Norman, were fired. “So how was everybody’s summer?” DeGeneres joked in her opening monologue a few weeks later. “Good, yeah? Mine was great. Super terrific.” She went on to say that “we have made the necessary changes and today, we are starting a new chapter”.
Reviews were not positive. “Ellen DeGeneres returns, delivers an insincere apology, and life moves on” went the headline in Forbes magazine, echoing the damning verdict on social media – the court of public opinion – where DeGeneres was attacked for being “tone deaf” and “disingenuous”.
An inflated sense of self-importance is par for the celebrity course. So is rudeness to minions. But with DeGeneres, 62, the allegations cut to the quick of her appeal. She has built her reputation on her down-to-earth likeability and as a pioneer of gay rights, who – after she came out in 1997, had her sitcom Ellen first lauded, and then, quite literally, cancelled – went on to become one of the wealthiest entertainers in the US. Forbes estimated her net worth to be $330m as of 2019 – and her 2020 earnings to be a further $84m. As well as her show, she has a home furnishings and clothing brand, ED – “inspired by who I am as a person”.
The daughter of Christian Scientist parents, DeGeneres dropped out of college and worked in various jobs – waitress, bartender and house-painter – while performing stand-up comedy in New Orleans. In 1994, she landed a starring role in a sitcom, These Friends of Mine, subsequently retitled Ellen, playing the part of Ellen Morgan, an amiably screwball, perennially single bookstore owner with a cast of suitably kooky friends – a role that would bring her first-name-only recognition.
DeGeneres’s sexual orientation had long been an open secret in Hollywood, but in April 1997 she made the decision to go public in a cover story for Time magazine with the coverline “Yep, I’m gay”; her character in Ellen came out on the show that month, too. It was hailed as a milestone moment for gay rights in the US while at the same time drawing out critics who dubbed her “Ellen Degenerate”. “Did you expect it to turn into all of this?” Oprah asked her. “I mean, I knew it would be big,” DeGeneres replied. “But I had no idea it would be this big.” Yet despite the furore, and the applause, it seemed that audiences were not quite ready to accept the transition of DeGeneres’s character from being, as one television executive put it, “the girl next door” to “the lesbian next door”. Ratings declined and after a year the show was cancelled.
In an attempt to rebuild her confidence and career she went back on the road as a stand-up and in 2003 was given her own daytime talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show. This has followed the time-honoured format of celebrity guests – Sharon Osbourne, the Kardashians, Jennifer Aniston (many, many times) – talking endlessly about nothing much at all, leavened with inspiring stories of ordinary people overcoming adversity to do extraordinary things. Such was her popularity that politicians felt it useful to make an appearance: Barack Obama when he was a senator; Michelle Obama, when she was First Lady, joined DeGeneres doing press-ups and in a dance routine; Hillary Clinton made three appearances when she was running for president. Attitudes to sexuality in the US had changed in the years since DeGeneres had come out – a change she played no small part in bringing about.
In 2008, following the overturn of the same-sex marriage ban in California, she married her partner of four years, the Australian-born actor Portia de Rossi. “It was like she gave Middle America an opportunity to say, ‘Look, I know a gay person too’,” says one pundit. “Her whole career has been built on being relatable. People loved her.”
So DeGeneres’ “Be kind to one another” sign-off seemed totally in character. In her opening monologue in September, she explained she’d been inspired to use the phrase after learning of an 18-year-old student, Tyler Clementi, who had taken his own life in 2010 after being outed as gay online. “I thought the world needed more kindness and it was a reminder that we all needed that.”
But for any celebrity, trading on kindness is tantamount to an invitation for people to present evidence to the contrary. The stories began to multiply – about DeGeneres treating her show’s writers badly, being cold, stand-offish, rude to wait staff in restaurants, and basically not quite as nice as she seemed, or wished to be seen.
In 2018, Netflix aired a 70-minute stand-up comedy special, Relatable, which began with DeGeneres talking about how a friend, told that she was planning a return to stand-up, had pointed out just how much her life had moved on from her audience’s. “I know, but I still think I’m relatable,” DeGeneres said. “Anyway, just then, two of my butlers stepped into the library and announced that my breakfast was ready...” She went on to joke about her beautiful home, her black Amex card and her multiple awards. The routine displayed a spikiness seldom seen in her chat show.
As a prelude to the Netflix special, The New York Times ran a major profile of DeGeneres under the headline: “Ellen DeGeneres is not as nice as you think”, in which the interviewer brought up the rumours that she wasn’t always kind to those she worked with. “That bugs me if someone is saying that because it’s an outright lie,” she responded. “The first day [on the show] I said: ‘The one thing I want is everyone here to be happy and proud of where they work, and if not, don’t work here. No one is going to raise their voice or not be grateful.’ That’s the rule to this day.” But it did nothing to stop the drip-feed of criticism.
In March this year, a comedian, Kevin T. Porter, launched a Twitter campaign asking his followers for “the most insane stories you’ve heard about Ellen being mean”, and promising to pledge $2 to a local food bank for every credible account. He ended up donating $600. The following month, as the US went into lockdown, members of her show’s union crew complained that there had been no communication about hours or pay during quarantine and that DeGeneres had hired non-union technicians to set up a remote broadcast from her home. Daytime TV is a dogfight and the disobliging stories began to affect ratings.
In June, it was reported that the show’s ratings had fallen 14 per cent to a new season low. Then came the BuzzFeed revelations. “I think Ellen DeGeneres will be going through utter turmoil in her head because she’s really getting it from both barrels,” says Mark Borkowski, a leading reputation management consultant. “When any celebrity is in a bubble and given permission to be who they are, the ego is fed and bad habits and a bad attitude just grow and grow. But we now live in an age of authenticity; you cannot stand forward and project the values if you do not reflect those values, because social media is out there sending stories on Twitter. Everybody is a reporter and can show the world what these people are really like.”
Few people know more about Hollywood misbehaviour and its consequences than the gossip columnist Perez Hilton. He likens the furore around DeGeneres to a “speed bump in the road” for her career. What it does signal, he says, is the beginning of a renewed, post-MeToo appraisal of how celebrities should behave in the workplace. But is this just the starting gun for a witch-hunt?
One prominent LA showbusiness lawyer who won’t be named says people are getting called out for bad things, which is good. “But it’s also created a dangerous cancel culture where you have younger people with no life experience at all, who can’t stand the heat in the workplace and who can just point fingers and kill people’s careers.”
Hilton disagrees: “Many careers in entertainment are extremely stressful… You should work hard, that is the culture. But it should also be a professional environment, which means a boss, someone in a position of power, should not ask you out on a date or proposition you, or even scream at you. If somebody’s lazy and they’re not willing to work the hours, fire them. But you don’t need to scream, dehumanise them or insult them.”
Perhaps the most damaging allegations against DeGeneres are not that she was “unkind” but that she ignored the mistreatment of staff and allowed the toxic culture to flourish. It was an allegation she attempted to address in her opening monologue. “I learnt that things happened here that never should have happened,” she said. “I take that very seriously and I want to say I am so sorry to the people who were affected… I know I am in a position of privilege and power and I realise that with that comes responsibility.”
“Right now, she’s running up a sand dune as fast as she can while it’s collapsing beneath her,” the lawyer says. “But being contrite, saying, ‘I’ve got to be a better me’, that’s not enough. If it’s your name on the show, when it all comes down, you’ve got to take responsibility, you’ve got to take the hit.”
“I do wish she would have taken even more accountability,” Hilton says, “because there have been reports that she was aware to some extent, and in the room sometimes, when inappropriate things were happening. But she’s Ellen... why would a celebrity admit to more than they have to?”
The controversy did not quite generate the excitement – or ratings – that might have been expected. Viewing figures for the first week of the new season dropped 29 per cent from the previous season. But Hilton does not see the fall as critical. “She’s not going to get fired, nor is she going to quit; she’s signed up for multiple seasons. There is too much money being made by everyone involved with her show and, at the end of the day, that is what Hollywood cares about the most.”
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