Ellen DeGeneres Reportedly Ending Talk Show After 17 Years
Paul Dailly
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Ellen Degeneres has been on TV screens for decades, but it looks like viewers are about to see a lot less of the embattled star.
Daily Mail is reporting that the Ellen host is thinking of bringing the show to a close following a recent wave of misconduct allegations that have triggered an investigation by WarnerMedia, the company that owns the show.
"She feels she can't go on and the only way to recover her personal brand from this is to shut down the show," a source explained to Daily Mail.
"The truth is she knew what was going on—it's her show. The buck stops with her. She can blame every executive under the sun, but Ellen is ultimately the one to blame."
DeGeneres sent a memo to her staff on Thursday, in which she addressed the allegations plaguing the series.
"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. Clearly some didn't," she wrote, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
"That will now change and I'm committed to ensuring this does not happen again."
The report about the future of the daytime talker comes after producer Andy Lassner shut down rumors that the series would be canceled.
He wrote the following via social media:
"Me: I really think 2020 is gonna turn around and start getting better," he captioned a post late last week.
"2020: Lol, I'm gonna make your bed the epicenter."
A follower then questioned the future of the series.
"I seriously wish you well. If the Ellen show goes off the air due to all these allegations (I, personally, have stopped watching) I hope you are able to find employment quickly. Your twitter account always made me laugh."
"Nobody is going off the air," Lassner responded.
It's been a troubling few months for the series.
Buzzfeed News published an article that had almost a dozen staffers of the show speaking about a toxic culture behind the scenes of the show.
There were allegations of racism, as well as producers picking favorites among the show's wealth of employees.
Buzzfeed News subsequently reported that producer/head writer Kevin Leman groped employees and made inappropriate remarks about their appearances on a regular basis.
This behavior was said to have went unchecked on the show.
While Ellen is the host of the show, the Buzzfeed News article found staffers making it clear that she was not the only person to blame for the work environment.
"People focus on rumors about how Ellen is mean and everything like that, but that's not the problem," one ex-employee told Buzzfeed News.
"The issue is these three executive producers running the show who are in charge of all these people [and] who make the culture and are putting out this feeling of bullying and being mean."
The producers in question are Ed Glavin, Mary Connelly and Lassner, who spoke out about the allegations late last month.
"We are truly heartbroken and sorry to learn that even one person in our production family has had a negative experience," they said in a joint statement.
"It's not who we are and not who we strive to be, and not the mission Ellen has set for us. 'For the record, the day to day responsibility of The Ellen Show is completely on us."
"We take all of this very seriously and we realize, as many in the world are learning, that we need to do better, are committed to do better, and we will do better."
What do you think will happen?
Paul Dailly was an Associate Editor for TV Fanatic.Follow him on X.
