Ellen DeGeneres discussed being "kicked out of show business" on the first night of the Ellen’s Last Stand…Up Tour in West Hollywood Wednesday.
"What else can I tell you?" DeGeneres joked, as reported by Rolling Stone's Krystie Lee Yandoli. "Oh yeah, I got kicked out of show business. There's no mean people in show business."
"The 'be kind' girl wasn't kind," she continued. "I became this one-dimensional character who gave stuff away and danced up steps. Do you know how hard it is to dance up steps? Would a mean person dance up steps? Had I ended my show by saying, 'Go fuck yourself,' people would've been pleasantly surprised."
Ellen announced in May 2021 that she was bringing her daytime talk show to an end after nearly two decades. The announcement was made after Warner Media conducted an investigation into employees' allegations of racism, sexual misconduct and intimidation from higher-ups, but the host and comedian publicly dismissed suspicions that the accusations played a part in her decision.
DeGeneres confessed she spent a lot of time figuring how she wanted to address her fall from grace and what exactly she wanted to say. "Honestly, I'm making jokes about what happened to me but it was devastating, really," she said. "I just hated the way the show ended. I love that show so much and I just hated that the last time people would see me is that way."
DeGeneres said her colleagues were like her family, but she admitted to being an immature boss who "didn’t know how to be a boss."
"I didn't go to business school. I went to Charlie's Chuckle Hutt," she joked. "The show was called Ellen and everybody was wearing T-shirts that said 'Ellen' and there were buildings on the Warner Brothers lot that said 'Ellen,' but I don’t know that that meant I should be in charge."
DeGeneres spoke about her emotional struggle dealing with the bell curve of her career where she was cast aside after coming out on her sitcom in the 1990s before becoming popular once more with her talk show and falling out of favor once more.
"It’s been such a toll on my ego and my self-esteem," she confessed. "There's such extremes in this business, people either love you and idolize you or they hate you, and those people somehow are louder."
She added, "For those of you keeping score, this is the second time I've been kicked out of show business…Eventually they’re going to kick me out for a third time because I’m mean, old, and gay.”
Ellen’s Last Stand…Up Tour will air as a special in the fall for Netflix.
