This week, Ellen DeGeneres announced she is ending her eponymous daytime talk show after nearly two decades.
The announcement, notably, came roughly a year after Warner Media was confirmed to have been investigating the Ellen DeGeneres Show over toxic workplace allegations. In a new interview shared Thursday morning, DeGeneres said those workplace-related accusations are not the inspiration behind her decision to bring her show to a close.
“If it was why I was quitting, I would have not come back this year,” she told Today’s Savannah Guthrie. “I really did think about not coming back because it did, you know, it was devastating. I am a kind person. I am a person who likes to make people happy.”
DeGeneres said she had “no idea” of any alleged toxicity among the show’s team and “never saw anything that would even point to that.” Asked by Guthrie how she would respond to someone who might argue that she should have known what was going on, DeGeneres pointed to the size of the show’s staff and expressed disappointment that no one came to her directly.
“I don’t know how I could have known when there’s 255 employees here and there are a lot of different buildings, unless I literally stayed here until the last person goes home at night,” she said. “It is my name on the show so clearly it affects me and I have to be the one to stand up and say, ‘This can’t be tolerated.’ But I do wish somebody would have come to me and said, ‘Hey, something’s going on that you should know about.’”
Elsewhere, DeGeneres was asked if she felt like she was being “canceled,” to which she responded by questioning the intentions of recent criticisms.
“I mean, I really didn’t understand it,” she said. “I still don’t understand it. It was too orchestrated. It was too coordinated. And, you know, people get picked on. But [it was] for four months straight for me. And then for me to read in the press about a toxic work environment, when all I’ve ever heard from every guest that comes on the show is what a happy atmosphere and what a happy place it is.”
DeGeneres also said the criticism against her “did feel very misogynistic.”
Earlier this week, Tiffany Haddish was reported to be the leading choice to take over DeGeneres’ daytime slot after her season 19 exit.
