Ellen DeGeneres is about to sign off. The show’s most famous face has announced that her 19th season will be her last one. “I truly have felt like next season was the right time”.
If it was why I was quitting, I would have not come back this year,” she told Savannah Guthrie in an exclusive interview on TODAY Thursday. “I really did think about not coming back, because it was devastating. It started with attacks on me and attacking everything that I stand for and believe in and built my career around. I am a person who likes to make people happy.”
“To tell you the truth, I always go with my gut. It’s time, my gut instinct told me “on her new episode, she said
She didn’t mention the allegations of a toxic work environment that dogged the talk show last year.
Three senior producers have since been fired, and the host apologized live on air in September. Before the scandal, the 63-year-old claimed to have decided to end the show after its 19th season, in 2022.
“Two years ago, I signed a deal for three more years and I always knew in my heart that season 19 would be my last,” she will be seen saying at the start of Thursday’s programme.
“I don’t know how I could have known when there’s 225 employees here and there are a lot of different buildings,” she said. “Unless I actually stayed here until that last person goes home at night.
“It’s my name on the show, so clearly it affects me, and I have to be the one to stand up and say this can’t be tolerated,” she said.
On Thursday’s show, she’ll be joined by fellow talk show host Oprah Winfrey, as well as singer Pink, who sings the theme song.
In the 1990s, DeGeneres made a name for herself as a stand-up comedian and with a self-titled sitcom.
The show’s ratings have also dropped since September’s most-watched premiere in four years, which featured a lengthy apology from DeGeneres. According to The New York Times, the show lost more than a million viewers after that peak, averaging 1.5 million viewers over the past six months compared to 2.6 million for the same period last year.
However, DeGeneres stated that the lower ratings had no bearing on her decision to end the show. Savannah pointed out that while ratings have dropped for all talk shows, DeGeneres’ show has seen a particularly steep drop.
The Ellen DeGeneres Show, which debuted in 2003 and is distributed by Warner Bros., features a variety of dancing, games, and giveaways, as well as A-list celebrities. However, the host, who built her brand around the motto “Be Kind,” began Season 18 with a lengthy apology in September.
“When you’re a creative person, you constantly need to be challenged – and as great as this show is, and as fun, as it is, it’s just not a challenge anymore,” DeGeneres said in the interview
I was going to stop after season 16,” DeGeneres said. “That was going to be my last season and they wanted to sign for four more years and I said I’d sign for maybe for one.
“They were saying there was no way to sign for one. ‘We can’t do that with the affiliates and the stations need more of a commitment.’
“So we [agreed] to three more years, and I knew it would be my final one. That was always the plan.”
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