Photo: www.latimes.com
The Ellen DeGeneres Show has been a fixture in daytime television for over 20 years. However, the talk show host is bidding the series goodbye, saying it had “forever changed my life.”
The last hour of the show was pearls of wisdom at its finest. In 2003, when this show first started as a series, it didn’t look like much; now, after almost 20 years on the air, we can see that things have changed drastically. Ellen then said that she “couldn’t say ‘gay’ on the show” when it began or mention her wife, Portia de Rossi, due to gay marriage not being legal at the time.
“Now I say ‘wife’ all the time,” she stated.
Emphasizing that there was resistance to the series and that some handed it a chance of thriving, DeGeneres vowed that her hiatus wouldn’t be long.
“Today is not the end of a relationship; it’s more of a little break,” she stated. “You can see other talk shows now.”
The program created an interactive slideshow of the footage from DeGeneres’ 3,200 episodes that included her tearfully expressing gratitude to fans after a successful taping of their first show. Other highlights in Ellen’s career include hosting the Oscars and being given a Mark Twain Prize and Presidential Medal Of Freedom.
When it started, Jennifer Aniston, one of the first guests on the show, gave Ellen a welcome mat that said, “Thanks for the memories.”
Last week, Oprah Winfrey came to the show and discussed how homely it is. Other guests were Billie Eilish and Pink. “You help people find their joy,” said Pink, who performed in the show.
DeGeneres expressed her thanks to her staff, producers, and loyal viewers.
“If I’ve done anything in the past 19 years, I hope I’ve inspired you to be yourself – your true, authentic self,” said the comic, who outed herself on her ABC sitcom, Ellen, in 1997.
There were no statements in the last episode that talked about the controversies involving the show over the last few years, such as reports of toxic culture that resulted in DeGeneres apologizing to her staff in 2020. The Ellen DeGeneres Show is distributed by Warner Bros. Television, a Warner Bros. Discovery unit.
