Ellen DeGeneres Is Launching Her Comeback

Photo: NBC/Casey Durkin/NBC via Getty Images

Ellen DeGeneres is on an actual comeback tour. The comedian ended her long-running talk show in 2022, two years after BuzzFeed reporting revealed a toxic work environment fostered by the show’s producers, including allegations of racism, sexual harassment, and “intimidation.” While DeGeneres claimed to have no knowledge of the bad work environment, there was no coming back from the hit. She ended her show and then disappeared for two years to flip houses with Portia. Now, she’s back, and she’s making jokes.

DeGeneres kicked off her Ellen’s Last Stand … Up Tour on Wednesday night in Los Angeles, to an audience that Rolling Stone described as “eager.” The magazine reported that DeGeneres wasted no time getting into the nitty-gritty.

“I used to say that I didn’t care what other people thought of me, and I realized … I said that at the height of my popularity,” DeGeneres said as her opener. Credit where credit is due, that’s a funny line. Elsewhere in her set, she bemoaned her status as a showbiz pariah.

“Oh yeah, I got kicked out of show business. There’s no mean people in show business,” she said. “The ‘be kind’ girl wasn’t kind. 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.”

While that would indeed have been surprising, it’s interesting that DeGeneres thinks she was kicked out of show business. Earlier in her set, the comedian reportedly announced that her tour would culminate in a Netflix special. That’s not exactly “kicked out.”

“It’s been such a toll on my ego and my self-esteem,” DeGeneres said of her fall from grace. “There’s such extremes in this business; people either love you and idolize you or they hate you, and those people somehow are louder.”

It’s not all bad for DeGeneres, though. In Rolling Stone’s report of the evening, the magazine noted she got a standing ovation. After her set, she apparently did a Q&A with the audience, during which people told her how much she meant to them and what her work had done for them and their loved ones. That’s very sweet, but if she’s really committed to being candid, I’m going to need someone to ask DeGeneres about Dakota Johnson.