Ellen DeGeneres “misses” being on TV.
The former talk show host, 68, shared her thoughts during a rare appearance on the U.K.’s The Graham Norton Show. DeGeneres and her wife Portia de Rossi, 53, left the U.S. for England ahead of Donald Trump’s 2024 election win.
“I’ve nothing really going on and I really miss being on TV,” DeGeneres said, according to Page Six, six years after a 2020 investigative report from BuzzFeed detailed allegations of racism, fear, and intimidation behind the scenes of her Ellen DeGeneres Show.
The show continued for two more years, airing its last episode after 19 seasons on June 17, 2022. DeGeneres insisted that the decision to end the show had nothing to do with the allegations.
“I miss a lot about it,” DeGeneres reflected, “laughing with the writers and the audience. I think about doing stuff here.” She quipped that the U.K. seems to cast a much wider net, which may make it easier. “I think it is pretty easy to get on TV here,” she said. “You have a pottery show, you have a sewing show, and you even have a show about people watching TV shows,” references to The Great Pottery Throwdown, The Great British Sewing Bee, and Gogglebox.
The accusations about the work environment at Ellen shocked the public because of the host’s “joyful” public image.
DeGeneres called the report “orchestrated” as she defended herself in a 2021 interview on Today. “I am a kind person,” she said. As for the allegations, I still don’t understand it. It was too orchestrated; it was too coordinated… And then for me to read in the press about a toxic work environment, when all I’ve heard from every guest that comes on the show is what a happy atmosphere this is, and what a happy place it is?”
DeGeneres embarked on a stand-up tour in 2024, before she and de Rossi left the country for picturesque Kitesbridge Farm—a historic, 43-acre Cotswolds property.
She told broadcaster Richard Bacon, according to the BBC, last July, “We got here the day before the election and woke up to lots of texts from our friends with crying emojis, and I was like, ‘He got in.’ And we’re like, ‘We’re staying here.’”
The pair joined the list of celebrities who fled the country when Trump was reelected, including Rosie O’Donnell and James Cameron.
