Ellen DeGeneres revealed today that she is ending The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2022 after its 19th season wraps. The move comes after DeGeneres and her staff faced an investigation into misconduct allegations behind-the-scenes of the show in 2020.
DeGeneres explained that she’s seeking more of a challenge in her work in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “As great as this show is, and as fun as it is, it’s just not a challenge anymore. I need something new to challenge me,” she said.
She told the outlet that she had intended to end her talk show years ago. “I was going to stop after season 16. 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,” she said. “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 [settled] on three more years and I knew that would be my last. That’s been the plan all along. And everybody kept saying, even when I signed, ‘You know, that’s going to be 19, don’t you want to just go to 20? It’s a good number.’ So is 19,” she said with a laugh.
DeGeneres added that she never wavered on the decision. “When we did our 3,000th show, they showed that highlights montage, and everybody was emotional,” she recalled. “We all hugged and everyone had tears in their eyes, and Mike Darnell was here going, ‘You really want to [end this]?’ Look, it’s going to be really hard on the last day, but I also know it’s time. I’m a creative person, and when you’re a creative person you constantly need to be challenged, which is why I decided to host the Oscars or why I decided to go back to stand up when I didn’t think I would. I just needed something to challenge me. And as great as this show is, and as fun as it is, it’s just not a challenge anymore. I need something new to challenge me.”
DeGeneres also touched on the show’s misconduct investigation and allegations of her being notoriously mean off-screen.
“It almost impacted the show. It was very hurtful to me. I mean, very,” she said. “But if I was quitting the show because of that, I wouldn’t have come back this season. So, it’s not why I’m stopping but it was hard because I was sitting at home, it was summer, and I see a story that people have to chew gum before they talk to me and I’m like, ‘Okay, this is hilarious.’ Then I see another story of some other ridiculous thing and then it just didn’t stop. And I wasn’t working, so I had no platform, and I didn’t want to address it on [Twitter] and I thought if I just don’t address it, it’s going to go away because it was all so stupid.”
Regarding the workplace reports, “there was an internal investigation, obviously, and we learned some things but this culture we’re living in [is one where] no one can make mistakes,” she said. “And I don’t want to generalize because there are some bad people out there and those people shouldn’t work again but, in general, the culture today is one where you can’t learn and grow, which is, as human beings, what we’re here to do. And I can see people looking at that going, ‘You don’t care about what people [went through.]’ I care tremendously. It broke my heart when I learned that people here had anything other than a fantastic experience—that people were hurt in any way. I check in now as much as I can through Zoom to different departments and I make sure people know that if there’s ever a question or ever anything, they can come to me and I don’t know why that was never considered before. I’m not a scary person. I’m really easy to talk to. So, we’ve all learned from things that we didn’t realize—or I didn’t realize—were happening. I just want people to trust and know that I am who I appear to be.”
DeGeneres is slated to discuss her decision with Oprah Winfrey on her May 13 show.
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