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After comedian and former “American Idol” judge Ellen DeGeneres wraps up her “Ellen’s Last Stand…Up” comedy tour on August 17, 2024, she plans to leave show business for good. That’s what she told the audience at a show in Santa Rosa, California on July 1, according to the SF Gate.
During a Q&A portion of the show at Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, one fan asked DeGeneres, 66, if she had any interest in starring in a new movie or on Broadway after her comedy tour, the outlet reported.
“Um, no,” DeGeneres answered. “This is the last time you’re going to see me. After my Netflix special, I’m done.”
When another fan begged her to reprise her role as Dory in Disney’s “Finding Nemo” franchise, the paper said DeGeneres replied, “No, I’m going bye-bye, remember?”
Ellen DeGeneres Rejects Accusations by Talk Show Staffers That She Was ‘Mean’
DeGeneres, who was a judge on “Idol” during season 10, announced her summer tour in May, per Deadline, leading up to filming her last comedy special — an hour-long stand-up routine that will air on Netflix. The final two dates of her tour, in Minneapolis, are scheduled to be filmed, according to Fox 9.
According to the SF Gate, DeGeneres started her Santa Rosa show by saying, “Let me catch you up on what’s been going on with me since you last saw me. I got chickens. Oh yeah, and I got kicked out of show business for being mean.”
DeGeneres went on to address the behind-the-scenes controversy at her talk show, “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” which was rocked in 2020 by a Buzzfeed expose in which multiple staffers complained about toxic workplace conditions. An internal investigation ended with multiple executives being fired and DeGeneres decided to end the show after its 19th season in 2022, per The Hollywood Reporter.
During her Santa Rosa set, the SF Gate reported, “I used to say, ‘I don’t care what people say about me.’ Now I realize I said that during the height of my popularity.”
“I can be demanding and impatient and tough,” she continued. “I am a strong woman. I am many things, but I am not mean.”
In April, during a comedy show in West Hollywood, Rolling Stone reported that DeGeneres told the audience that the backlash after the Buzzfeed report took a “toll on my ego and my self-esteem. There’s such extremes in this business, people either love you and idolize you or they hate you, and those people somehow are louder.”
“I just thought, ‘Well this is not the way I wanted to end my career, but this is the way it’s ending,” she said, according to the outlet. “I just hated the way the show ended. I love that show so much and I just hated that the last time people would see me is that way.”
Ellen DeGeneres Only Stayed on ‘Idol’ for 1 Season Because She Didn’t Want to Be Mean to Contestants
The accusations against DeGeneres and her show’s executives stunned the public in 2020, given that her brand was centered around kindness and laughter, and she often talked about how hard it was for her to critique or potentially offend others.
That was the reason she gave for leaving “Idol” after only one season. Though DeGeneres loved the idea of being a judge — alongside Randy Jackson, Simon Cowell and Kara DioGuardi — because she was a fan of the show, she told radio host Howard Stern in 2015, per People, it wound up being “one of the worst decisions I’ve made.”
She told Stern, “As a fan of the shows, it doesn’t matter that I sing or I know anything about pitch or anything, I’m like everybody else at home. It’s ‘American Idol.’ And you’re watching and you’re a fan. So I thought, ‘I’m going to represent these people at home that have opinions and like somebody or don’t.’ But then I just thought, ‘I can’t break this person’s heart. Let somebody else do that.’”
In an archived video of her first day of Hollywood Week, which aired in February 2010, DeGeneres told DioGuardi she was already uncomfortable with giving contestants bad news, and they jokingly decided DioGuardi could be the “harsh one” because DeGeneres has a “good heart.”
DeGeneres is touring the U.S. throughout July and August, but canceled four of her concert dates in Dallas, San Francisco, Seattle and Chicago without explanation, per the Los Angeles Times.
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