Ellen DeGeneres jokes about getting ‘kicked out of show business’ in trailer for final stand-up special
“Had I ended my show by saying, ‘Go f— yourselves,’ people would’ve been pleasantly surprised to find out I’m kind,” DeGeneres quips in the “For Your Approval” teaser.
Ellen DeGeneres is making light of a dark period in her Hollywood career in the new trailer for the comedian’s final stand-up special Ellen DeGeneres: For Your Approval.
“Alright, well, let me catch you up on what’s been going on with me since you saw me last. I decided to take up gardening, I got chickens. Let me see what else I can tell you about what’s been going on,” the 66-year-old says in the teaser below, trailing off for a moment of silence before exclaiming: “Oh, yeah! I got kicked out of show business!”
DeGeneres goes on to summarize her downfall, which kicked off via a 2020 BuzzFeed News reportdetailing several Ellen DeGeneres Show staffers who anonymously accused the talk show of having a toxic workplace environment.
“Yeah, the ‘be kind’ girl wasn’t kind, that was the headline. Here’s the problem, I’m a comedian who got a talk show and I ended the show every day by saying, ‘Be kind to one another,'” DeGeneres says in the trailer. “Had I ended my show by saying, ‘Go f— yourselves,’ people would’ve been pleasantly surprised to find out I’m kind.”
She later clarifies: “I didn’t go into this business for money. It was about healing my childhood wounds. I thought, if I could make people happy, then they’ll like me. And if they like me, I’ll feel good about myself. All I can say about that is, thank God for the money.”
Amid fallout from the claims, WarnerMedia launched an internal investigation that concluded there were “deficiencies” in the show’s production, with the program eventually parting ways with three producers: Ed Glavin, Kevin Leman, and co-executive producer Jonathan Norman.
DeGeneres eventually apologized to staff and offered them several perks amid the scandal, with a source telling Entertainment Weekly at the time that DeGeneres addressed staffers by saying, “Does that mean I’m perfect? No. I’m not. I’m a multi-layered person, and I try to be the best person I can be and I try to learn from my mistakes.” EW also obtained a letter from DeGeneres that was distributed to her colleagues amid the incident, in which she said, “we are taking steps, together, to correct the issues.”
“As we’ve grown exponentially, I’ve not been able to stay on top of everything and relied on others to do their jobs as they knew I’d want them done,” DeGeneres wrote. “Clearly some didn’t. That will now change and I’m committed to ensuring this does not happen again.”
In addition to The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the comedy icon became a pop culture staple throughout the 1990s, particularly for her work in stand-up comedy as well as on her groundbreaking sitcom Ellen, on which she publicly came out as a lesbian in a famous 1997 episode.
Ellen DeGeneres: For Your Approval streams Sept. 24 on Netflix. Watch the stand-up special’s new trailer above.
