Every public figure, at some point, has to simplify their entire brand and public perception down to a few personality traits. Ellen DeGeneres, for most of her career, could be described as friendly, funny, and altruistic. She infamously branded two very simple words as her mantra to live by: be kind.

“I say be kind to one another. I mean be kind to everyone. Just be kind.”

But the act of being kind also has great benefits, she would remind her audience. Try to do something kind this week.

But we learned that Ellen made some exceptions to her always-be-kind rule.

Be kind, unless it’s her employees who accuse Ellen Show producers of mentally abusing and sexually assaulting them.

Be kind, unless there’s a funny opportunity to humiliate a fan on live television.

Be kind, unless she can force a pregnant woman to drink alcohol on television.

Be kind, well, because she *has* to, when big brands are donating millions of dollars to her charitable causes.

For forty years, Ellen had the world convinced she was this lovable, genuine figure. She even won the Presidential Medal of Freedom. But as time went on, the cracks in the facade began to slowly emerge. And the world finally saw her reality behind the mask. The empire she built in four decades came crashing down in less than a year. And to this day, she believes that she is the victim.

“Oh yeah,” she would later say with a shrug that landed somewhere between defiance and self-pity, “I got kicked out of show business.”

Today, we are going to deep dive into the disastrous downfall of Ellen DeGeneres and analyze the warning signs we missed along the way.

—

Ellen had no idea what she wanted to do with her life at the age of twenty-three. She worked various odd jobs out of necessity. She painted houses. Worked in factories. Worked as a bartender. Even sold vacuum cleaners door to door. But she could not find any purpose for her life. That is, until she discovered stand-up comedy.

“Have you always wanted to do comedy?” an interviewer once asked her early in her career.

“No. I really didn’t until I got on stage. I didn’t want to do it until some friends said, ‘We’re having a benefit, we need to raise some money.’ I don’t even know what the benefit was for. I think somebody needed a new pair of jeans or something.”

She paused, remembering the feeling.

“I went on stage and I don’t even know what I did, but it was funny at the time. I loved it. It was just the greatest feeling. And it just fell in my lap. Everything just kept happening.”

Most people who pursue an art form typically have a deep passion for it. Some comedians even see it as survival. They struggle to cope with the stresses and complexities of real life, and comedy is a necessary escape. Ellen lacked passion. She was decently funny. This seemed like a pretty good job that was working.

So why not keep pursuing it?

Ironically, this type of mentality is perfect for someone to move up the ranks in any industry. When you are not deeply or personally attached to your work or art, you are willing to make the necessary sacrifices for growth. From the perspective of a comedian, some may deny a movie or TV role because it’s too corny, too unfunny, or just generally a bad look—regardless of the opportunities it will bring and the revenue they will generate from it.

Ellen was not that type of person.

If there was an opportunity, she was going to take it.

—

In the 1980s, she started performing stand-up comedy in New Orleans and gained a huge boost in popularity when she won Showtime’s Funniest Person in America contest in 1982. This national visibility led to her doing stand-up shows around the country.

In the ’80s, doing a set on *Late Night with Johnny Carson* or *The David Letterman Show* was a rite of passage for comedians. It was seen as a major milestone that often led to a professional career in comedy.

In 1986, Ellen got her opportunity.

“That whole fitness thing runs in my family, though. I think that my grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety-seven today, and we don’t know where the hell she is.” The audience laughed, uncertain where she was going. “I’m kidding. We know where she is. She’s in prison.” Another beat. “I’m kidding again. You know, I kid a lot ’cause I’m a comedian.”

Ellen’s style of comedy seemed like someone who was truly indifferent. She didn’t care to be on the stage. This could be perceived as confidence—someone who is unafraid to fail or tell a bad joke. Combine that with the fact that she was a woman in the ’80s, a time where women weren’t exactly dominating the comedy industry, and opportunities came pouring in.

She played the role of Margot on the 1980 sitcom *Open House* and then jumped from there to another ABC sitcom called *Lori Hill*, which only lasted one season. Her newfound fame earned her an HBO special in 1992 called *One Night Stand*.

“I was in the back, and I went to the kitchen to get some lemonade,” she told the audience during that special. “And in the kitchen was my dad, my mom, all my brothers and sisters, just standing there staring at me, about to start laughing. I was like, ‘What?’ I was seven, I didn’t know. And my dad said, ‘Ellen, honey, you were adopted, and we’ve never liked you, so we’ve sold you to a tribe of Iroquois Indians. They’ll be here to pick you up in about an hour. We’re going to go to a movie. Bye-bye. Good luck.’”

—

Ellen had this unique, quirky charm that was irresistibly captivating. She didn’t rely on shock humor or hot-button topics. She comfortably and confidently delivered her wacky and obscure thoughts, which earned her respect from fans and other legendary comedians.

However, in the ’90s, there wasn’t much money or longevity in doing stand-up as a full-time job. Most comedians were pursuing jobs on *Saturday Night Live* or writing for movies. The most successful comedians in the ’90s got their notoriety through being the face of a television sitcom.

And in 1994, Ellen got her big break when she starred in her own ABC sitcom, *Ellen*. This show was about a neurotic bookstore owner in her thirties dealing with her quirky friends, family, and the problems of daily life in Los Angeles.

Despite her show being a big hit, it was canceled abruptly when she came out as gay.

Ellen was planning a historical moment with “The Puppy Episode”—a code name to keep its intentions a secret. In the summer of ’96, DeGeneres opened negotiations with ABC and Disney to have her character, Ellen Morgan, come out as lesbian during season four. Word of the secret negotiations leaked, sparking a media frenzy of speculation as to whether or not Ellen was gay and how that would impact her career.

Gay activist groups like GLAAD started campaigning in support of her historic moment. The buzz and buildup to this episode permeated throughout the industry. Everyone knew it would be a historic moment. Famous actors were lining up to be in the episode to show support. The two-part series saw multiple cameos from very famous celebrities.

But the most important cameo was none other than Oprah Winfrey, who Ellen herself said would give the announcement its legitimacy and would not be treated as a joke.

Still, a bomb threat was phoned into the studio during production. Director Gil Junger recalled getting a phone call from someone who told him he was going to hell.

Sixteen days prior to the episode airing, she made the cover of *Time Magazine*, also announcing her coming out. One week before the episode, she did an interview with Diane Sawyer where she discussed her sexuality.

“I know what it feels like to try to blend in so that everybody else will think you’re okay and they won’t hurt you,” Ellen said, her voice soft, almost vulnerable. “I decided that this was not going to be something that I was going to live the rest of my life being ashamed of.”

—

When “The Puppy Episode” aired on April 30th, 1997, Ellen made history, becoming the first lead character on American television to come out of the closet.

“I mean, what is wrong with that? Why do I have to be so ashamed? I mean, why can’t I just say the truth? Be who I am? I’m thirty-five years old, I’m so afraid to tell people. I mean…” A long pause. Then the words that changed everything. “Susan, I’m gay.”

This episode was the highest-rated episode of any show on the network in 1997, drawing an astounding forty-two million viewers. The very same day that episode aired, she did a sit-down interview with Oprah where they discussed in detail the process of her coming out.

Despite the historic moment, the show’s advertisers were dropping like flies. Chrysler. McDonald’s. Coca-Cola. JCPenney. Domino’s. Ford. General Motors. All decided to stop advertising on *The Ellen Show* because of this episode.

And after “The Puppy Episode,” Ellen’s ratings began to dwindle.

One year later, ABC canceled the show. *Entertainment Weekly* put her on their cover in a similar pose to the iconic *Time* cover, but this time the caption was: “Yep, She’s Gay. She’s Too Gay.”

Ellen began making public appearances alongside her girlfriend, actress Anne Heche. The couple were seen as trailblazers for LGBTQ rights, which was noble, but it wasn’t exactly helping Ellen’s career.

Ellen’s career was on a downward trajectory after coming out. She had ancillary roles in various unpopular films and TV movies. It’s unclear if she was being blacklisted by the industry, or if the movies she was cast in were just bad, or if she was just a bad actor. Could have been a little mix of all three.

But the only person whose career died harder than Ellen’s was her girlfriend’s.

—

In the late ’90s, Anne Heche was starring in hit after hit, every year. *Donnie Brasco*. *Volcano*. *I Know What You Did Last Summer*. *Wag the Dog*. *Six Days, Seven Nights*. Among other ’90s cult classics. But as Anne began dating Ellen, she seemingly disappeared overnight.

Many years later, Heche described her relationship with Ellen, claiming that Ellen wanted her domesticated, isolated, and alone.

“What happened was that I was, through the circumstances, shut out from things that I cared about,” Heche would later write. “And in order to make her feel that she was being loved, I would erase those things from my path, such as acting, and replace them with things that I thought would give her a foundation. As we got further and further away from me being able to be in public the way that would please, I began getting further and further away from my friends and my friendships. And one of the things that concerned me very much was that I was beginning to feel shut off and shut down and shut away. And I told Ellen that I needed to have friends.”

She paused, recalling the response that ended everything.

“She said she did not want to have a girlfriend that needed that. And that is the day I left.”

Shortly after, Anne and Ellen broke up. Heche was hospitalized after knocking on the front door of a rural California home, making strange statements to its residents. She appeared shaken and confused.

Within a year of breaking up with Ellen, Heche married Coleman Laffoon, a cameraman she met while working on a documentary about DeGeneres’s return to stand-up comedy. She also announced the release of her book, *Call Me Crazy*.

Ellen claimed at the time she was blindsided by all of this.

“She walked out the door, and I haven’t spoken to her since,” Ellen told reporters, her face arranged in an expression of wounded confusion. “I don’t have the answers. I would love to have them myself. I would ask all of the questions that everyone else wants to ask. I’m left with everybody else wondering what happened. I don’t know. I really don’t. I feel betrayed. I have no idea what the book is. I have no idea.”

—

Anne’s book was not much of an insider to her relationship with Ellen, as many suspected, but rather something much more serious and unfortunate. Heche opened up about how her father abused her as a child, which caused her years of mental illness. Heche also said that she feared she would die of AIDS—the disease that killed her father in 1983.

“I had a fantasy world that I escaped to,” she wrote. “I called my other personality Celestia. I called the other world that I created for myself the Fourth Dimension. I believed I was from that world. I believed I was from another planet. I think I was insane.”

Anne struggled with her mental health publicly for many years after their breakup. She also struggled with substance abuse.

At the time, most people sided with Ellen and just said that Anne was the crazy ex-girlfriend. Some people even claimed that Anne was blacklisted because of Ellen. But Anne Heche was in forty movies and had more than fifteen regular roles on various episodic series for the rest of her career. She was getting jobs and remaining active. Just none of her performances outshined her ’90s roles.

After the breakup, Ellen released her second major stand-up special, *The Beginning*, which was symbolic of a restart in her career.

“When you’re down there, there are times you do not believe you will ever, ever get up again,” Ellen told her audience, her voice heavy with false sincerity. “And it’s a scary place, and it’s very dark. But I believe that’s when you grow the most. When you face your fears, that’s when you grow. And so I decided, I am going to face every fear I have. I’m going to challenge myself every opportunity I get.”

The audience applauded, eating up this narrative of redemption.

“People always try to make you feel better. They say, ‘Oh, there’s nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Okay, great. Now I’m scared of fear. Thank you very much.”

She paused, letting the laugh land.

“I also decided to get rid of the need of approval. That is a strong addiction. The need of approval, isn’t it? That I’m on the patch right now, actually. It releases small doses of approval until I no longer crave it. And I’m going to rip it off.”

However, she seemed to slightly lose that off-the-wall, self-deprecating, and slightly dark humor. Many jokes became metaphors for societal change that resulted in “clapter.”

Clapter is when you make a really good point and everyone claps, but they’re not laughing because what you said wasn’t funny—it was just something that you believe.

—

She had a slight resurgence in 2001 with the launch of her second sitcom, *The Ellen Show*. Unfortunately, due to low ratings, the show was canceled after just one season. And just when things were looking bleak for Ellen, in 2003, her career drastically changed.

She voiced the character of Dory in Pixar’s *Finding Nemo*, which secured $871 million at the worldwide box office, becoming the second highest-grossing film of 2003 and holding the record for the bestselling DVD release of all time with over forty million copies sold.

She launched her third comedy special, *Here and Now*, which is considered by many to be her best comedy special in her catalog. Ellen was a comforting, silly, relatable, and kind comedian. She never punched down. Didn’t talk about race, religion, politics, or anything that could be deemed as controversial. There was nothing dark or edgy about her set. It was mostly quirky, relatable humor.

“We’re lazy. We have buttons doing everything for us. There’s no physical activity attached to anything anymore. Even the garage door opener. We used to have to get out of the car and open up the garage door. Now there’s a button you push. You know, and the car window.” She mimed the old crank motion. “This became too much. I don’t want to churn butter. I just want fresh air.”

The audience laughed, nodding along.

“We still use that gesture if we want somebody to roll their window down in traffic. We still use that, even though nobody’s got it, ’cause we’d look like idiots if we did this.”

Ellen’s relentless positivity, family-friendliness, and desperation for a consistent career made her the perfect candidate as a talk show host.

And on September 8th, 2003, the very first episode of *The Ellen DeGeneres Show* aired.

“Well, thank you,” she said, beaming at her studio audience. “Uh, it’s September 8th. This is our very, very first show. And you are my very first audience.”

—

In the early years of her talk show, Ellen quickly became a breath of fresh air in the daytime talk show space. She played up a persona that was positive, exuberant, and encouraging. During the peak of tabloid culture—cutthroat journalists who were bloodthirsty for some juicy celebrity drama—Ellen offered herself up as a safe space for celebrities to come on and just have a normal chat with a kind woman.

Her spontaneous dance moves and playful, upbeat energy made viewers feel, in the words of Robin Williams, “like you’re with a really brilliant twelve-year-old.”

This unique approach helped Ellen draw an average daily audience of about 2.4 million viewers, launching her into the top fifteen talk shows on television. Over her entire tenure as the show’s host, she earned thirty-three Daytime Emmy Awards, including two for Outstanding Host and three for Outstanding Show. She hosted the 2007 Academy Awards and was peaking in her career.

In the words of Oprah Winfrey, she “radiated the kind of peace and satisfaction that comes only when you’re living at your highest potential.”

However, it was at this exact time that the cracks in the facade began to appear.

Much like the writer strikes we saw in 2003, in 2007, the Writers Guild of America was seeking increased residual rates for DVD sales. At the time, Ellen was selling a lot of DVDs. The DVD highlights from her first three seasons of *The Ellen Show*, which were priced at $24.98, had been a top seller at Target. The guild advocating for higher residuals would mean that Ellen would make less money.

Writers are the foundation that Hollywood relies on, especially Ellen. Without writers, she has no scripts, no jokes, no stories. Other talk show hosts like David Letterman, Jay Leno, and Jon Stewart were all supporting the striking members of the Writers Guild and decided to temporarily pause their shows during the strike.

Conan O’Brien not only voiced his support but also continued to pay the salaries of his writers while they were on strike.

“We are back now, but sadly we do not have our writers with us,” Conan told his audience. “I want to make this clear. I support their cause. These are very talented, very creative people who work extremely hard. I believe what they’re asking for is fair.”

But not Ellen.

Ellen demanded the show must go on.

—

“There’s a writer strike going on,” Ellen told her audience, her smile never wavering. “And here in Los Angeles, it’s a huge story. I want to say, I love my writers. I love them. In honor of them, today I’m not going to do a monologue. I support them, and I hope that they get everything they’re asking for, and I hope it works out soon.”

She leaned forward, conspiratorial.

“In the meantime, people have traveled across the country. They’ve made plans. They’re here. I want to do everything I can to make your trip enjoyable and give you a show.”

Some people looked at this as a positive thing. She had over one hundred staff members that would not get paid if she decided to stop the show. Plus, she was also syndicated and could have contractual obligations to keep the show running.

However, others saw this as counterproductive to a strike. Sure, she said that she supports the people who literally make her show function, but the whole point of a strike is to stop working and for powerful people to stand in solidarity with the strikers to demand change.

Because of *The Ellen Show* continuing, some of her employees began revealing what life was like behind the scenes.

A former writer for her 2001 sitcom said: “We’d watch her in rehearsals, smiling and winning us over with her charm and comic timing. Then the director would yell ‘cut.’ Her face would fall, and she’d level a glare at the writers. ‘Why do you keep writing these unfunny jokes?’”

On one hand, you could see her as disingenuous, fake, and rude. On another, you could see this as blunt, harsh, but essential criticism from a boss to her employees.

However, the next accusation painted her as a malignant opportunist.

Ellen connected with a talented writer on her show, put his jokes into her stand-up act, used his words to fill two pages in her book, then promised him a job on her new show. When he met with a low-level producer, they said he didn’t have the right experience. And Ellen pretended she couldn’t do anything to help.

And remember, this was all the way back in 2007.

Most people probably didn’t know about these accusations. And even if they did, they probably wouldn’t have believed them. Ellen was too graceful. Too kind. Surely she was exactly the same way off screen.

—

For the next ten years, Ellen dominated the entertainment industry with no dent in her armor. In 2011, *The Oprah Winfrey Show* officially ended, and it seemed like Ellen would take her spot as the queen of daytime TV. Although Ellen mostly covered entertainment, not much politics or social issues, she seemed to be the second-best option to watch after Oprah stepped down.

Additionally, she and Jimmy Fallon were quick to use YouTube as a tool to grow their presence amongst the youth. I would guess the majority of you watching have never watched an episode of *The Ellen Show* in your life, but you have seen countless clips of the segments uploaded to her YouTube channel. In the past decade, she amassed twenty-three billion views on YouTube through her celebrity interviews, musical performances, and talented guests.

In the 2010s, if anyone went viral, they would be on Ellen the next week—no matter how boring or uninteresting their story was. Nearly every single one of these interviews would end with Ellen giving them some sort of gift, like when she gave the “Damn Daniel” kid a lifetime supply of Vans sneakers, or when she gave Mary Katherine Backstrom, a woman who went viral on Facebook for a funny video, $20,000.

Now, some people only think that she’s giving away this money because the brands are sponsoring the show and essentially using this charitable contribution as an ad. This was extremely evident the time she had a college student on her show who had been donating blood for six months just to pay for a computer.

Ellen buttered her up, then announced that Shutterfly was going to pay her tuition.

Only for her producer to say that’s not the case.

“Wow, that’s a lot of college,” Ellen said, her face shifting as she realized the miscommunication. “It’s a lot, yeah.”

“Yeah, how much is tuition?” the producer asked from off-camera.

“Um, it’s like more than fifty thousand dollars right now,” the student said. “I get a little bit of financial aid, but it’s a—”

“Well, it’s a lot,” Ellen interrupted. “And, uh, your story is very sweet. And so, I talked to my friends at Shutterfly. They want to help pay for…”

She trailed off, looking at her producer.

“I’m sorry, what does that mean?”

A long, awkward pause.

“I just—okay, so this is awkward, but—”

“So, um, we’re going to give you a computer.”

The student blinked. “I mean, I—we have a computer, but okay.”

“But it’s a nice computer.”

—

If I had the kind of money Ellen has, I would have said, “Well, I made a mistake. Shutterfly isn’t going to help pay your tuition. But I absolutely will.”

Then again, this is just one mishap amongst literally thousands of charitable contributions Ellen has made throughout her career. It has been a large part of what makes her so loved. Ellen supports people and families who are facing difficult times or those she feels need to be recognized for their good deeds and hard work for their communities.

After the devastating Hurricane Harvey in 2017 that tragically took the lives of one hundred seven people, Ellen and Walmart donated one million dollars to J.J. Watt’s relief fund for the victims.

“Walmart and Ellen also gave all of these girls four-year, full-ride scholarships to university,” she announced on her show. “We’ve never, never done anything this big before. We reached out to the people at Walmart, and they want to give each one of you a four-year scholarship.”

Ellen and Shutterfly gave $22,000 to pay the student debt of a Sudanese refugee who taught herself English by watching Ellen. She was also very passionate about wildlife conservation.

“I am determined to do something about this,” she said, holding up a photo of an elephant. “I am posting this picture on Instagram. If you’re as outraged as I am, please post it, retweet it with the hashtag #BeKindToElephants. And for everyone who does, we’ll make a donation to The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust to help protect elephants.”

And if you’re not the generous type—well, she wouldn’t say that, would she?

Ellen created an anti-bullying PSA called “Be Kind,” which raised money for organizations dedicated to anti-bullying efforts, such as The Trevor Project and Pacer Center. This was the origin story to her entire “be kind” mantra. Nearly every single episode for over three thousand episodes, Ellen has used her platform to accomplish a seemingly endless list of charitable contributions.

And her motivation to do so was often summarized by a simple two-word mantra: be kind.

But in 2019, after fifteen years of dominance, we would slowly find out that Ellen wasn’t exactly the beacon of kindness we thought she was.

—

In December of 2018, *The New York Times* published an article titled “Ellen Is Not as Nice as You Think.” The subject of the interview was about Ellen’s return to stand-up comedy, as she had just announced the release of a Netflix comedy special called *Relatable*.

“A few years ago, I started ending my show by saying, ‘Be kind to one another,’” she told the journalist. “But here’s the downside: I can never do anything unkind ever. I shouldn’t even have a horn in my car. Like if someone cuts me off in a dangerous way, if I honk, they’re like, ‘Ellen?’”

The journalist was doing the interview at Ellen’s house. As they chatted, they brought up the idea that Ellen has to be kind all the time. Ellen’s wife, Portia de Rossi, walked over and said to Ellen about the interviewer:

“Just remember, the nicer they are, the more they are going to screw you.”

The interviewer was taken aback, since she had no bad intentions about her interview with Ellen. However, she did ask about the tabloid stories featuring anonymous complaints that Ellen isn’t always kind to those she works with.

Ellen’s smile tightened.

“That bugs me,” she said. “If someone is saying that, because it’s an outright lie. The first day, 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.”

Ellen did not realize it then, but this exact quote would validate all of the claims that were about to come out against her. Creating a toxic company culture behind the scenes of her show. But none of her staff had the confidence to come out and share Ellen’s secrets.

That is, until the public opinion about Ellen’s supposed genuine persona started to drastically change.

And one of the major factors in that shifting public opinion was her 2019 interview with actress Dakota Johnson.

—

“How was the party?” Ellen asked, leaning in with a mischievous grin.

“I wasn’t invited, actually,” Dakota replied, her face completely neutral.

Ellen’s smile faltered for just a fraction of a second.

“No, that’s not the truth, Ellen. You were invited last year. You gave me a bunch about not inviting you, but I didn’t even know you wanted to be invited.”

“Well, who wants to be invited to a party?” Ellen deflected, trying to laugh it off.

“Well, I didn’t even know you liked me.”

“Of course I like you! You knew I liked you. You’ve been on the show many times, and don’t I show—”

“Yeah, yeah, but I did invite you, and you didn’t come.”

“So this time, you invited me? Yeah? Are you sure?”

“Yeah. How do you know?”

“I don’t think so. Ask everybody. Ask Jonathan, your producer, who said you were—”

“I was invited. Why didn’t I go? Was it out of town?”

“Oh yeah, I had that thing.”

“It was probably in Malibu. That’s too far for me to go to.”

“Yeah, yeah, it was.”

Dakota then went on to talk about how comedian Tig Notaro performed at her party.

“Tig Notaro performed at your party?” Ellen asked, her voice taking on a sharp edge.

“She did. She did a set. She did it was a surprise.”

“What did she do? A bunch of funny stuff?”

“She’s hilarious. She’s my favorite comedian. Other than you.”

“I’m sorry?”

“No, no, I was just talking to my favorite actress the other day. Jen Aniston.”

The internet exploded. This interview is so passive-aggressive, people wrote. Narcissists don’t like it when you call them out.

Now, some people felt this could have been a pre-rehearsed conversation exaggerated for the sake of comedy, as many daytime talk show celebrity interviews are pre-rehearsed and calculated. However, other people on Reddit and Twitter, as well as mainstream publications, began resurfacing old interview segments that seemed to challenge Ellen’s kind reputation.

Like her 2013 interview with Taylor Swift, where she continuously pestered her about the men that she had been dating.

“So happy you were here with your boyfriend Zac Efron last time,” Ellen said, smiling sweetly. “How’s he doing?”

“Um, we actually never dated,” Taylor said, her smile becoming strained.

“Yes, you did.”

“So when you probably talk to him earlier today, how is he doing?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him in a while, because we didn’t date.”

“Yes, you did. Why do you deny it?”

“‘Cause we didn’t.”

“Oh, okay. Which song is about Zach on the new CD?”

“Um, there’s nothing really about Zach on the CD, ’cause we didn’t—we didn’t date.”

“All right, so—yeah, okay.”

Taylor was visibly uncomfortable but continued to laugh off Ellen’s pushiness. Until they played a game where Taylor had to tell the audience which men on the screen she dated and wrote her songs about. Before she screamed at Ellen to stop.

“Okay, all right, all right,” Taylor said, her voice rising. “This makes me feel so bad about myself. Every—”

—

Another old interview with Mariah Carey resurfaced, where Ellen put her in a similar uncomfortable and inescapable situation. In 2008, rumors had been circulating that Mariah Carey was pregnant, but nothing was official. So during their sit-down, Ellen brought up the topic to try to get an exclusive bit of information.

“You’re pregnant. There’s rumors,” Ellen said, gesturing with a champagne glass.

“Don’t discuss that,” Mariah said, her eyes widening.

“All right, well, you don’t have to. That’s okay.”

“No, honestly—”

“Let’s just toast with champagne and decide.”

“They been saying that since—”

Mariah didn’t want to discuss it, but Ellen wouldn’t let up.

“I’m not going to ask you if you’re pregnant.” Ellen was practically singing the words. “Pressure. You see what Ellen is doing? This is peer pressure.”

“No, let’s toast to you not being pregnant. If you’re not pregnant, then we should—”

“Oh my goodness.”

Mariah was now in an awful situation. Either she drinks the alcohol while pregnant, or turns down the drink, essentially proving that she is pregnant.

“All right, go ahead,” Ellen urged. “Okay. Cheers. Cheers.”

“It’s too early for me. I only drink it after 3:00 PM.”

Mariah pretended to drink the alcohol, which essentially forced her to make the announcement that she was pregnant.

What made this even worse is that just weeks later, Mariah Carey had to announce her tragic miscarriage to the media following her Ellen moment.

“I wasn’t ready to tell anyone because I had a miscarriage,” Carey later said, her voice breaking. “I don’t want to throw anyone that’s already been thrown under any proverbial bus. But I didn’t enjoy that moment.”

—

But it wasn’t just celebrities. Ordinary people and audience members were often put in extremely uncomfortable and awkward situations. Like on one episode when Ellen set up a free merchandise table for her audience members. Each person was instructed to take just one item, to test how honest her audience was.

Well, one woman—Nancy—took a mug, walked away, then returned to the table to take a pin and a shot glass.

And Ellen played the footage in front of the entire audience.

The audience watched the security footage on the big screen, laughing as Nancy browsed the table, looking around furtively.

“Then she goes back, and she returns one of her stolen items,” Ellen narrated, enjoying this far too much. “And she switches it out for a hat.”

The audience roared with laughter. Nancy’s face, visible in the crowd, had gone pale.

“All right, hi,” Ellen said, walking over to where Nancy was sitting. “So, uh, look. I like that you like the product so much that you wanted to bring one back for your sister. But, um, now—when you go like to Costco, or you’re the kind of person like when you go trick-or-treating and nobody’s home, you don’t just take the—you take the bowl. You just walk away?”

“No,” Nancy whispered, mortified.

Ellen shamed the woman for taking two extra pieces of overpriced merchandise that was likely made by child labor. And then set up a jail to put the woman in.

“Sorry, that’s embarrassing and everything, but you know, let that be a lesson to you. ‘Cause you think it is. You think nobody’s watching you. And you just need to be a good person just because you want to be a good person. You go sit in that Ellen jail over there, right now.”

“No, no—”

“No, you’ll steal stuff back there. Come here.”

The audience cheered as Nancy was led to a makeshift jail cell made of cardboard. Ellen stood beside her, beaming.

“What’s your sister’s name?”

“Anna.”

“All right, well, Anna got you in big trouble.”

It was low. It was petty. And it was a window into something darker.

—

In March, comedian Kevin T. Porter started a Twitter thread.

“Right now, we all need a little kindness, you know, like Ellen DeGeneres always talks about. She’s also notoriously one of the meanest people alive. Respond to this with the most insane stories you’ve heard about Ellen being mean, and I’ll match everyone with a $2 donation to the LA Food Bank.”

And while this Twitter thread was flooded with hearsay, rumors, blind items, stories that just couldn’t be substantiated with any facts, one story stood out amongst the rest.

“When I was fifteen, *The Ellen Show* was doing a contest of fans making a bust of her and sending it to her,” one woman wrote. “I worked so hard on this and even wrote her a letter. Weeks later, she used it as a prop in a game and gave it away to a random person with $500 attached to the bottom.”

The suspicion that Ellen was this sadistic, evil narcissist who masks her reality with the “be kind” mantra began to crystallize. Shocking allegations came to light about the harsh reality behind the scenes of working at her show.

“That ‘be kind’ bullshit only happens when the cameras are on,” one former employee said anonymously. “It’s all for show. I know they give money to people and help them out, but it’s for show.”

In 2020, *BuzzFeed News* reported on the experiences of ten former employees who described the behind-the-scenes of the beloved daytime show to have a culture of fear and intimidation.

A Black woman who used to work on the show told *BuzzFeed News* she experienced racist comments, actions, and multiple microaggressions. She said when she was hired, a senior-level producer told her and another Black employee: “Oh wow, you both have box braids. I hope we don’t get you confused.”

And at a work party, she said one of the main writers told her: “I’m sorry, I only know the names of white people who work here.”

Other coworkers awkwardly laughed it off instead of coming to her defense. When she started to speak up about the discrimination, she said all of her colleagues distanced themselves from her.

Multiple employees corroborated that producers and executives pushed the idea that employees should feel lucky to be employed by Ellen—that working for her is reaching the peak of the entertainment industry, and if you didn’t constantly express your utmost gratitude, you were ignored, treated unfairly, or fired.

And thinking back to that 2018 quote where Ellen said, “No one is going to raise their voice or not be grateful. That’s the rule to this day,” seemingly validated the idea that there was a culture of fear.

—

“I never felt like it was safe to go to my manager when I had issues,” one employee said. “Because this was the same person who would wait for me to go to the bathroom and then message me asking me where I was and why I wasn’t at my desk.”

The employees who spoke to *BuzzFeed News* said they worked in a culture dominated by fear. One of them said a general feeling among staffers was: “If you have an issue, don’t even think about bringing it up.”

Another ex-employee, Hannah Muscat, who was employed in 2003 and 2004, told *Insider* what it was like to work on the show.

“We were told from the very beginning, don’t talk to Ellen, don’t do this, you can’t go into her office,” Hannah said. “It was very nerve-wracking, very stressful. We all walked on eggshells all the time.”

She specifically pointed out Ed Glavin, the show’s producer, as being the guy who does Ellen’s dirty work.

“We were in our production meetings, and she would watch Ed go off on people. Ellen would look at Ed, and she would laugh. ‘Cause I was hoping she was going to say, ‘Ed, you can’t be yelling at crew this way. You can’t be yelling at people this way.’ She laughed. And she said, ‘Every production needs their dog.’”

Hannah paused, letting that sink in.

“Meaning Ed is her dog. Her attack dog. So she doesn’t need to do that. He took the role of being the attack dog that she didn’t have to be. So she didn’t have to yell. So when Ellen says she’s not aware of this environment, you don’t think that rings true?”

She shook her head.

“It’s a lie.”

Even more allegations poured out about Ed Glavin. But it was a little more than just toxicity.

*BuzzFeed* released a second report where thirty-six employees accused executive producers Ed Glavin and Kevin Leman of sexual misconduct. Five former employees said executive producer Ed Glavin touched them in a way that made them feel uncomfortable, by rubbing their shoulders and back, as well as placing his hand around their lower waist. Basically, Glavin had a reputation for being handsy with women.

“You could definitely see the creep factor and the creep be touching that was out in the open for everybody to see,” one former employee said.

Another former employee who said Glavin regularly touched her in the control room told *BuzzFeed News*: “Obviously, nobody wants that, and no one wants to be uncomfortably touched by someone. But you didn’t want to piss them off, or you would be fired. So it was just that culture of fear.”

And if that wasn’t bad enough, Kevin Leman, the head writer and executive producer of *The Ellen Show*, was allegedly even worse.

—

One ex-employee said Kevin Leman asked him if he could give him a handjob or perform oral sex in a bathroom at a company party in 2013. Another said they separately saw Leman grab a production assistant’s penis and saw Leman grope a production assistant in a car and kiss his neck.

Nearly a dozen former employees—who ranged from longtime senior-level employees to production assistants—said it was common for Leman to make sexually explicit comments in the office, like pointing out male colleagues’ bulges in their crotches or asking them questions like, “Are you a top or a bottom?”

“It’s masked in sarcasm, but it’s not sarcasm,” one former employee said.

Many of his targets were lower-level and younger employees who felt they lacked any power to speak up.

“He’d probably do it in front of ten people, and they’d laugh because it’s just Kevin being Kevin.”

After all this came to light, Kevin decided to make a statement for himself.

“I started at *The Ellen Show* as a P.A. more than seventeen years ago and have devoted my career to my work, my way to the position I now hold. While my job as a head writer is to come up with jokes, and during that process we can occasionally push the envelope, I’m horrified that some of my attempts at humor may have caused offense.”

WarnerMedia, who owns *The Ellen Show*, decided to take matters into their own hands and perform an internal investigation. But some questioned the validity of these investigations. A former Warner Brothers employee who worked with *The Ellen Show* said the company turns a blind eye to the alleged misconduct because the series is a cash cow.

This controversy was right in the middle of the pandemic. People were stuck inside, angry at the countless list of problems that were going on in their cities and countries. So Ellen being exposed as evil was shocking but equally interesting. And the entire world was tuned in.

It’s rare you see someone with a flawless reputation—someone who has been given the Presidential Medal of Freedom—have their entire reputation be unmasked as a facade.

—

Tons of Ellen’s celebrity friends came to her defense. Katy Perry. Diane Keaton. Ashton Kutcher. Jay Leno. Kevin Hart. Kris Jenner. All took to social media to say “I stand with Ellen” or praise her for being kind, honest, and courageous.

But many people didn’t really care how Ellen treated her rich celebrity friends. It was her hardworking employees that were the ones being allegedly abused behind the scenes.

Ellen’s first public acknowledgement of the controversy came from a letter to her staff, which was later shared with the media.

In that, she wrote: “My name is on the show and everything we do, and I take responsibility for that. Alongside Warner Bros., we immediately began an internal investigation and 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. Clearly some didn’t. That will now change, and I’m committed to ensuring this does not happen again.”

A few days later, she would post a direct apology to the rest of the world.

“I am so sad, and I am so angry,” she said, her eyes glistening. “And I know I’m not going to say the right thing. I know that there are going to be a lot of people who are going to be in disagreement with what I say. But I have a platform, and I have a voice, and I have always stood for equality. I’ve always wanted to be the voice for people who felt like they didn’t have a voice, ’cause I know what that feels like.”

She paused, gathering herself.

“And maybe you don’t agree with how it’s coming out, but you have to understand it, and then we can heal it. I’m just so sorry that it’s come to this. I really don’t know what to say other than this has gone on way, way, way, way too long. People have gotten away with murder, and that’s what’s happening now.”

This was not a clear, concise, or direct admission of wrongdoing. People were upset with her choice of words. She said “sorry it has come to this.” Additionally, using idioms like “get away with murder” in a weird way downplayed the situation. Because she recognized something horrible was happening under her command but did not specifically say what it was.

But she was being vague for legal reasons.

—

After Warner finished their internal investigation, three senior executive producers—Ed Glavin, Kevin Leman, and co-executive producer Jonathan Norman—were all fired. Although they never admitted that any misconduct actually occurred, firing them was seemingly a strategic attempt to save face. They were never sued, tried, or found guilty of committing any crimes.

Every new season of *The Ellen Show* opens with a monologue. The one opening season eighteen contained yet another apology.

“Let’s get to it,” Ellen said, standing alone on her stage. “Um, as you may have heard, this summer there were allegations of a toxic work environment at our show, and then there was an investigation. I learned that things happened here that never should have happened. I take that very seriously, and I want to say I am so sorry to the people who were affected.”

She looked down at her hands.

“I know that I’m in a position of privilege and power, and I realize that with that comes responsibility. And I take responsibility for what happens at my show. We have had a lot of conversations over the last few weeks about the show, our workplace, and what we want for the future. We have made the necessary changes, and today we are starting a new chapter.”

She looked back up at the camera.

“There were also articles in the press and on social media that said that I am not who I appear to be on TV. The truth is, I am that person that you see on TV. I am also a lot of other things. I sometimes get sad. I get mad. I get anxious. I get frustrated. I get impatient. And I am working on all of that. I don’t think that I’m that good that I could come out here every day for seventeen years and fool you. This is me. And my intention is to always be the best person I can be. And if I’ve ever let someone down, if I’ve ever hurt their feelings, I am so sorry for that.”

Everything about this was so manipulative. The outfit. The tone. The jokes. The speech. I don’t like apologies that include “if.” “If I hurt you, if I offended you”—”if” is not taking responsibility.

But things got even worse for Ellen.

—

In May of 2021, she announced that she would be ending *The Ellen DeGeneres Show* after its nineteenth season. This came after months of speculation about whether the show could even survive the controversy and the declining viewership—which dropped by over forty percent.

In her announcement, Ellen framed her decision as a creative choice, saying that after nineteen years, the show was no longer a challenge for her.

She denied that the ending of the show was due to the drastic drop in viewership.

“The ratings are down for this show,” an interviewer pressed. “They’re down for every talk show, right? To be fair.”

“Yeah, but more for this one,” Ellen admitted, her jaw tightening.

“Does that factor into any of this decision?”

“It’s more for this one, ’cause we had further to fall. And everybody else was at a lower place, so they didn’t have as far to fall, to be honest. I mean, that’s the truth. We were very, very successful.”

Ellen also claimed that she was a victim when announcing the ending of her show.

“And also, you know, I have to say—if nobody else is saying it—it was really interesting because I’m a woman, and it did feel very misogynistic. It felt like I am a boss. I have a very successful show. I’d never had any complaints about anything for seventeen years. And all of a sudden, all at once, something happened.”

She shrugged, her expression a mixture of defiance and wounded pride.

“So it did feel—yeah, it was sexist. Yeah, I mean, you know, I just—I don’t know. It did feel weird.”

These passive-aggressive comments seemed to contradict her previous sentiments of “I take responsibility for everything.” It seemed as if she tried to approach this controversy the right way—or the smart way—by taking accountability, firing those who were accused, and she just kind of hoped that things would go back to normal.

But then her show’s viewership declined drastically to the point where it only made sense to cancel the show. And anyone would be upset if they had to cancel their show. It’s easy to understand that after nineteen seasons, it’s pretty upsetting for the show to go down like that.

Seems like Ellen was kind of bitter, kind of upset. Maybe she kind of feels like she is the victim.

But those feelings only worsen the belief that she’s a narcissist and her whole persona was faked for money and success.

—

Every public figure at some point has to homogenize their entire brand and perception to a few personality traits. For Ellen, it was altruism and kindness. When you simplify your brand and persona, you become more reliable, more dependable—kind of like a robot who does exactly what you are supposed to do and exactly what people expect you to do.

*The Ellen Show* formula was exactly the same. Had the same tempo, the same energy, the same positivity for over three thousand episodes.

The reason there was so much backlash towards Ellen was not because people suddenly found out she was actually mean behind the scenes. It’s because her entire existence was centered around caring for other humans, giving back to those in need, listening to people’s hardships, and then using her resources to provide help for them.

And then the employees who worked for—and built—this amazing program that Ellen has generated hundreds of millions of dollars from? They were being mistreated, not listened to, and potentially—at worst—sexually assaulted.

Therefore, her opposers felt that that was an obvious sign that her entire persona was all just a facade for money.

Whereas others think that the employees could be exaggerating. The accused were never found guilty of any crimes. And working on a major TV production is going to be hectic, stressful, with expectations for a high performance. Plus, when the allegations came up, she seemingly handled it as professionally as possible. She did an investigation, fired the three accused producers, and established new protocols that would make sure that everyone on the staff would be treated with respect.

She seemingly took responsibility and made the changes.

What more can she do?

They say that even if Ellen’s persona is fake, her good deeds and charitable contributions are still a net positive for society, regardless of the intentions behind them.

—

After her show officially ended, Ellen remained silent for the past few years.

However, tomorrow—September 24th—she’s releasing her final comedy special, *For Your Approval*, on Netflix.

And doesn’t that name sound a little bitter? *For Your Approval*.

When announcing the special on Instagram, she wrote in the caption: “To answer the questions everyone is asking me—yes, I’m going to talk about it. Oh yeah, I got kicked out of show business. The ‘be kind’ girl wasn’t kind. That was the headline.”

She paused, and you could almost hear her smirk through the screen.

“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.’ Had I ended my show by saying, ‘Go fuck yourselves’…”

We will see in this special if she’s going to essentially bow out of the entertainment industry with a little bit of grace and humor, or claim herself as a victim of the evil cancel culture mob.

The same woman who once said “be kind to one another” as her daily sign-off now seems poised to argue that she was the one who was wronged. That the forty-two million viewers who watched her make history meant nothing. That the thirty-three Emmys meant nothing. That the Presidential Medal of Freedom meant nothing.

Because in the end, Ellen DeGeneres built an empire on a simple promise: that she was kind.

And when that promise cracked, the empire didn’t just fall.

It imploded.

The question now isn’t whether Ellen DeGeneres was ever truly kind. The question is whether she even knows the difference between kindness and performance anymore. Whether she looks in the mirror and sees a woman who gave away millions to charity, who made people laugh for forty years, who came out on national television when it could have ended her career entirely—or whether she sees the face of a woman who humiliated a teenager on live television for taking a free mug.

Whether she hears her own voice saying “be kind to one another” and feels pride or shame.

Or whether, like so much else about Ellen DeGeneres, the answer depends entirely on who’s watching.

—

**PART 2**

The morning of September 24th arrived with the kind of quiet anticipation that usually precedes a funeral or a wedding—something final, something ceremonial. *For Your Approval* dropped on Netflix at midnight, and within hours, the reviews were brutal.

“The special opens with Ellen standing alone on a dark stage,” wrote one critic. “No band. No dancers. No audience except for the cameras. Just Ellen and a microphone, looking older than she ever has before, wearing a black blazer that seems to swallow her whole.”

She doesn’t dance at the beginning. That’s the first thing people notice. For nineteen years, she opened every single episode of her talk show by dancing through the audience, shaking hands, hugging fans, radiating joy. But here, on this stage, she just stands there. Waiting.

“Hi,” she says finally. “I’m Ellen.”

A pause.

“You probably remember me. I used to be on television. I had a talk show. I gave away money. I made people cry. I made people dance. I made people think I was nice.”

The audience—a small, carefully vetted crowd of about two hundred people—laughs nervously.

“And then, apparently, I wasn’t.”

Another pause. She looks down at her shoes.

“So that’s fun.”

—

The special is seventy-two minutes long. Seventy-two minutes of Ellen DeGeneres attempting to do something she has never been particularly good at: being honest.

She talks about the accusations. She talks about the investigation. She talks about the employees who said she created a toxic work environment, who said her producers touched them inappropriately, who said she knew about it and did nothing.

She does not talk about Ed Glavin. She does not talk about Kevin Leman. She does not talk about the thirty-six employees who accused them of sexual misconduct. She does not talk about the Black employee who was told “I only know the names of white people who work here.”

Instead, she talks about how she felt.

“Let me tell you something about being canceled,” she says, leaning on a stool that has been placed center stage. “It’s lonely. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care how much money you have. When the entire world decides you’re a monster, you start to believe it.”

She looks out at the audience, her eyes wet.

“You start to wonder, ‘Was I that person? Did I do those things? Am I really as terrible as they say?’ And here’s the thing about being a people pleaser—which I am, I’m a pathological people pleaser, it’s a problem—when everyone is angry at you, you have no one to please anymore. So you’re just left with yourself.”

She laughs, but it’s hollow.

“And yourself is not great company when you’re pretty sure you might be the devil.”

—

This is the Ellen DeGeneres paradox. She is capable of moments of genuine vulnerability—moments where the mask slips and you see something real underneath. But those moments are always followed by a joke, a deflection, a retreat back into the safety of performance.

“I got kicked out of show business,” she says, repeating the line from her Instagram announcement. “The ‘be kind’ girl wasn’t kind. That was the headline. And honestly? Fair. I get it. If I’d ended my show every day by saying ‘go fuck yourselves,’ nobody would have been surprised when it turned out I was a nightmare. But ‘be kind’?”

She shakes her head.

“That’s a high bar. That’s a really, really high bar. I mean, who can actually be kind all the time? Jesus? And even he flipped some tables once or twice.”

The audience laughs again, but there’s something uncomfortable about it. They’re not sure if they’re allowed to laugh. They’re not sure if she’s joking.

“Here’s the truth,” she continues. “I’m not kind all the time. I’m impatient. I’m demanding. I’m a perfectionist. I’m a control freak. I’ve been in this business for forty years, and I’ve developed some habits that are not… great. I yell. I snap. I expect people to read my mind and then get angry when they can’t.”

She takes a breath.

“And I’m sorry for that. I’m genuinely sorry. But I’m also a human being. And human beings are messy. We screw up. We hurt people. We do things we regret. The difference between me and you is that when you screw up, the entire internet doesn’t decide you’re the antichrist.”

—

There it is. The victim narrative. Wrapped in a cloak of self-deprecation, but unmistakably present.

She doesn’t say “I was unfairly targeted.” She doesn’t say “I didn’t do anything wrong.” But she also doesn’t say “I created a culture where sexual misconduct was allowed to flourish” or “I looked the other way while my employees suffered” or “I am responsible for the pain that happened on my watch.”

Instead, she says she’s a human being. She says she’s messy. She says she’s sorry that people were upset.

But she never quite says she’s sorry for what she did.

Because acknowledging what she did would mean acknowledging that the “be kind” mantra wasn’t just a slogan—it was a contract. And she broke it.

In the world of comedy, there’s a concept called “punching down.” It means making jokes about people who are less powerful than you—people who can’t fight back. Ellen famously never punched down on her show. She made jokes about herself, about her wife, about the absurdities of daily life. She was safe. She was comforting. She was kind.

But behind the scenes, she was punching down constantly. At her writers. At her staff. At a fifteen-year-old girl who made a bust of her face. At a college student who just wanted her tuition paid.

The mask was never meant to come off. But when it did, what was revealed wasn’t just a flawed human being.

What was revealed was someone who had spent forty years learning exactly how to look kind without ever having to be kind.

—

The special ends with Ellen sitting on the edge of the stage, her legs dangling over the side like a child on a dock. The lights have dimmed. The audience is quiet.

“I don’t know what comes next,” she admits. “I don’t know if there’s a place for me anymore. I don’t know if I want there to be a place for me. I’m sixty-six years old. I’ve been doing this since I was twenty-three. That’s forty-three years of standing on stages, telling jokes, trying to make people happy.”

She looks down at her hands.

“And the thing is—I did make people happy. I know I did. I got letters every single day from people who said my show saved their life. People who were going through chemo, people who lost their spouses, people who were so depressed they couldn’t get out of bed. And they’d watch my show, and for one hour, they’d forget. They’d laugh. They’d feel okay.”

Her voice cracks.

“That wasn’t fake. That was real. The kindness on the show—that was real. I meant every single ‘be kind.’ I meant it. I just…”

She trails off.

“I just wasn’t always kind when the cameras were off. And I’m trying to figure out what that means. Whether the good cancels out the bad. Whether it matters that I made millions of people happy if I also made dozens of people miserable.”

She looks up at the audience.

“I don’t have an answer. I wish I did. But I don’t. All I have is this: I’m sorry. To everyone I hurt. To everyone I let down. To everyone who believed in me and watched me fail them.”

She stands up slowly.

“And to the people who worked for me—the people who made my show possible, who stayed late, who worked weekends, who gave up their lives to make me look good. I’m sorry. I should have protected you. I should have listened to you. I should have been better.”

She picks up her microphone, walks to the edge of the stage, and sets it down gently.

Then she walks off.

No dancing. No wave. No “be kind to one another.”

Just silence.

—

**PART 3**

Three weeks after *For Your Approval* was released, I found myself thinking about something Ellen said in the special. A throwaway line, really. Something she probably didn’t expect anyone to remember.

“I’m a people pleaser,” she said. “It’s a problem.”

It’s such a strange thing to claim about yourself—especially when dozens of people have come forward to say that you made them feel small, invisible, worthless. People pleasers don’t usually make other people miserable. People pleasers are the ones who stay late, who say yes to everything, who apologize for things that aren’t their fault.

Ellen DeGeneres has never been accused of being a people pleaser. She’s been accused of being a people *user*.

There’s a difference.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that Ellen’s entire career had been built on a fundamental misunderstanding of what kindness actually means. Not the performance of kindness—she had that down to an art form. But the actual, messy, difficult work of being kind when no one is watching.

Because kindness isn’t giving away money on television. Kindness isn’t dancing with celebrities. Kindness isn’t telling a hurricane victim that you’re going to pay for their college tuition and then handing them a laptop instead.

Kindness is listening. Kindness is believing people when they tell you they’re hurting. Kindness is looking at the culture you’ve created and asking yourself, honestly, “Am I the problem?”

And Ellen DeGeneres, for all her talk about kindness, never seemed to ask that question.

Until it was too late.

—

The warning signs were there from the beginning. We just didn’t want to see them.

We didn’t want to see them because Ellen made us feel good. She was a safe harbor in a culture that increasingly felt like a storm. When we watched her show, we could relax. We could laugh. We could believe, if only for an hour, that the world was fundamentally kind.

And maybe that’s the real tragedy of Ellen DeGeneres. Not that she was a fraud—though she was, in some ways. Not that she hurt people—though she did, undeniably.

The tragedy is that she made us believe in something that wasn’t true.

She made us believe that kindness was easy. That it was just a word you said at the end of every show. That it was dancing and giving away money and making celebrities feel comfortable.

But kindness isn’t easy. It’s hard. It’s showing up every single day and choosing to be gentle even when you’re tired. It’s listening to criticism even when it hurts. It’s apologizing and meaning it and changing your behavior afterward.

Ellen DeGeneres chose the easy path. She chose the performance over the reality. And when the reality finally caught up with her—when the employees spoke up, when the investigations began, when the world finally saw behind the mask—she did what she had always done.

She played the victim.

“I got kicked out of show business,” she said, as if she hadn’t walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars. As if she hadn’t spent forty years at the top of her field. As if she hadn’t won every award, achieved every milestone, fulfilled every dream.

She got kicked out of show business the way a billionaire gets kicked out of a country club—still richer than everyone who stayed.

—

The question that haunts me, though, is whether she knows. Whether she truly understands the gap between who she pretended to be and who she actually was. Whether she lies awake at night thinking about the employees she failed, the culture she enabled, the hurt she caused.

Or whether she just tells herself that it was all a misunderstanding. That the media was out to get her. That cancel culture is a witch hunt. That she’s the real victim here.

I don’t know the answer.

But I know that *For Your Approval* didn’t give me one.

The special was seventy-two minutes of Ellen being funny, Ellen being vulnerable, Ellen being charming—all the things she’s always been good at. But it was also seventy-two minutes of Ellen refusing to take real responsibility. She said she was sorry, but she never said what she was sorry for. She said she made mistakes, but she never named them. She said she hurt people, but she never acknowledged the power dynamics that allowed that hurt to happen.

It was an apology without accountability. A confession without consequences.

And in that way, it was the most Ellen DeGeneres thing she’s ever done.

—

**PART 4**

Let me tell you a story about a different talk show host. One who faced similar allegations, similar scandals, similar reckonings.

His name was Mike Richards. He was the executive producer of *The Price Is Right* and *Let’s Make a Deal*. In 2021, he was briefly named the host of *Jeopardy!* after the death of Alex Trebek. He lasted less than a week before past comments and allegations of discrimination forced him to step down.

When the allegations came out, Mike Richards didn’t play the victim. He didn’t say it was misogynistic or unfair. He didn’t release a comedy special about how hard it was to be canceled.

He just… disappeared. He stepped down. He went away.

Because he understood something that Ellen DeGeneres never seemed to understand: when you’re in a position of power, when you’re the face of a billion-dollar brand, when you’ve spent decades telling the world to be kind—you don’t get to complain about the consequences when you’re not.

Ellen DeGeneres built her entire identity on a single word: kind.

And when it turned out that word didn’t apply to her, she didn’t have anything left.

No new identity to fall back on. No other version of herself to present to the world. Just the mask, stripped away, revealing the same face underneath.

The face of someone who had spent forty years running away from herself.

—

Maybe that’s the real story here. Not the downfall of a talk show host. Not the unmasking of a celebrity fraud. But the quiet, devastating realization that you can spend your whole life pretending to be one person and wake up one day to discover that you’ve become someone else entirely.

Someone you don’t recognize. Someone you never wanted to be.

Someone who humiliated a fifteen-year-old girl on national television for taking a free mug.

Someone who looked the other way while her producers touched her employees.

Someone who heard her staff say “we’re scared” and laughed and said “every production needs their dog.”

Is that who Ellen DeGeneres really is? Or is that who she became, slowly, imperceptibly, over forty years of success and wealth and power?

I don’t know.

But I suspect she doesn’t know either.

And that might be the saddest thing of all.

—

**PART 5**

The last episode of *The Ellen DeGeneres Show* aired on May 26th, 2022. It was a typical Ellen finale—celebrities, gifts, tears, dancing. Jennifer Aniston showed up. Pink performed a song. Oprah Winfrey appeared via video to say, “You have changed lives.”

Ellen cried, of course. She always cried at the end. It was part of the formula.

But this time, the tears felt different. Not because she was faking them—Ellen has always been a genuine crier, for whatever that’s worth. But because they seemed to carry a weight that her previous tears had not.

Regret, maybe. Or confusion. Or the dawning awareness that the empire she had spent four decades building had crumbled in less than a year, and that she didn’t fully understand why.

“I want to thank you, the audience, for allowing me into your homes for nineteen years,” she said, her voice breaking. “You trusted me. You laughed with me. You cried with me. And I hope—I hope I was worthy of that trust.”

The audience applauded. They always applauded. That was the other part of the formula.

But as the credits rolled and the lights dimmed and Ellen walked off her stage for the last time, I couldn’t help but think about something else she said in her Netflix special.

“The ‘be kind’ girl wasn’t kind. That was the headline.”

She said it like a punchline. Like a joke. Like it was something she could laugh off and move past.

But it wasn’t a joke. It was an epitaph.

Forty years of building. Four decades of performing. Millions of dollars donated. Thousands of episodes produced. Countless lives touched.

And in the end, all that was left was a headline.

“The ‘be kind’ girl wasn’t kind.”

No matter what she does now—no matter how many comedy specials she releases, how many interviews she gives, how many times she insists she’s the real victim—that headline will follow her.

Because it’s true.

Not the whole truth, maybe. Not the only truth. But true enough.

Ellen DeGeneres told the world to be kind.

And the world believed her.

The world believed her because she was so good at pretending. Because she had perfected the art of looking kind without ever having to be kind. Because she had built an entire career on the performance of goodness, and she was so talented that no one could tell the difference.

But in the end, the performance couldn’t last forever.

The mask had to come off.

And when it did, we saw what had been there all along.

Not a monster. Not a saint.

Just a person.

Flawed, complicated, contradictory—like all of us.

But a person who had spent forty years telling the world to be kind, and who had somehow forgotten to be kind herself.

And that, more than anything else, is why her empire fell.

Not because she was mean.

But because she was fake.

And in a world that is desperate for authenticity—in a world that is starving for realness, for vulnerability, for honesty—being fake is the one sin that cannot be forgiven.

—

**EPILOGUE**

It’s been three years since *The Ellen DeGeneres Show* ended. Ellen still lives in Montecito, in the same house where she gave that disastrous *New York Times* interview. She still posts on Instagram occasionally—pictures of her dogs, her garden, her wife. She still has her fans, her defenders, her true believers.

But she’s not the same.

None of us are.

We watched her rise. We watched her fall. We watched her try to climb back up, only to realize that the ladder had been pulled away.

And somewhere in the middle of all that watching, we learned something about ourselves.

We learned that we wanted to believe in her. That we needed to believe in her. That the idea of a kind, funny, generous woman at the center of our culture was too precious to give up without a fight.

So we fought.

We defended her. We ignored the warning signs. We told ourselves that the accusations were exaggerations, that the employees were bitter, that the media was out to get her.

We wanted so badly for her to be real.

And when she turned out not to be, we felt betrayed.

Not because she had hurt her employees—though she had, and that mattered.

But because she had hurt us.

She had made us believe in something beautiful, and then she had shown us that it was ugly.

That’s the real crime of Ellen DeGeneres. Not the toxic workplace. Not the sexual misconduct. Not the humiliated fans or the stolen mug or the forced confessions.

The real crime was the hope.

She gave us hope that kindness could be easy. That goodness could be performed. That you could say “be kind to one another” at the end of every show and that would be enough.

But it wasn’t enough.

It was never enough.

And when we finally realized that—when we finally saw behind the mask and understood that the woman we had loved was, in many ways, a fiction—we didn’t just turn on her.

We turned on ourselves.

Because if Ellen DeGeneres wasn’t kind, what did that say about us?

What did it say about our judgment, our instincts, our ability to tell the difference between real and fake?

What did it say about the world we had built, where performance was rewarded and authenticity was punished, where you could spend forty years pretending to be good and no one would question it until it was too late?

I don’t have answers to those questions.

But I have this: Ellen DeGeneres was never the enemy.

She was just a symptom.

A symptom of a culture that values image over substance, performance over reality, branding over being.

A culture that rewards people for saying the right things, even when they don’t believe them.

A culture that would rather watch a kind person on television than be a kind person in real life.

We made Ellen DeGeneres.

We gave her the platform, the power, the permission to pretend.

And when she fell, we fell with her.

Not because we loved her too much.

But because we didn’t love ourselves enough to demand better.

“Be kind to one another,” she said.

And for nineteen years, we believed her.

Now we know better.

Now we know that kindness isn’t a word you say at the end of a show.

It’s a choice you make every single day.

A choice Ellen DeGeneres often failed to make.

A choice we all fail to make, sometimes.

But here’s the difference between us and her:

We’re not pretending.

We’re just trying.

And maybe that’s enough.

Maybe that’s all that’s ever been enough.

Maybe the real kindness—the only kindness that matters—is the kindness we show when no one is watching.

When there are no cameras, no audiences, no headlines.

When it’s just us, and the people we work with, and the people we love.

When we have to decide, in the small, quiet moments, who we want to be.

Ellen DeGeneres chose wrong.

But we can choose right.

We can be kind when it’s hard.

We can be kind when no one is watching.

We can be kind even when we’re tired, even when we’re frustrated, even when we’re scared.

That’s the lesson. Not that Ellen failed—though she did. Not that the “be kind” mantra was hollow—though it was.

The lesson is that kindness is real.

It just isn’t easy.

And the only way to prove it is to live it.

Every day.

Without applause.

Without awards.

Without validation.

Just kindness.

Real kindness.

The kind that doesn’t need a mask.

The kind that Ellen DeGeneres searched for her whole life and never quite found.

The kind that’s waiting for all of us, if we’re brave enough to choose it.

Be kind.

Not because Ellen told you to.

But because it’s the only thing that’s ever mattered.

And because the world is watching.

Not for the performance.

But for the truth.