Ellen DeGeneres would return on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and planned to address all its controversy on the air. The 62-year-old host announced her syndicated program's comeback for its 18th season this month.
DeGeneres' namesake series was set to return on Sept. 21. After wrapping the previous season from her California home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the comedian wanted to do the show on the set itself without a live studio audience.
In a statement, Portia de Rossi's partner said she couldn't wait to get back to work and return to the Warner Bros. lot in Los Angeles studio. Before she ended the announcement, she announced she would be talking about the show's controversy on the air, Us Weekly noted.
The new season is about to feature a lot of A-list guest stars, like Tiffany Haddish, Alec Baldwin, Chrissy Teigen, Chris Rock, and Orlando Bloom. DeGeneres' in-house DJ Stephen "tWitch" Boss will also return to guest-host some of the upcoming episodes, although it remains to be seen if he will be joining her or taking her place.
The Ellen DeGeneres Show remains to be under investigation until today, Daily Mail noted. Just last month, executive producers Ed Glavin and Kevin Leman and co-executive producer Jonathan Norman were fired from the show due to the number of accusations thrown against them by some former and current staffers.
DeGeneres broke the news to the employees through a videoconference call. Here, she revealed how heartbreaking the recent allegations were. According to Variety, an "emotional and apologetic" Finding Nemo star talked to about 200 staff then.
On the call, DeGeneres said she was "not perfect" and the bosses behind The Ellen DeGeneres Show hadn't been sensitive to the employees either. Instead, they focused more on running the show like a "well-oiled machine," forgetting the staffers were also "human beings."
She also admitted the show had alienated its employees and guests by changing shooting timetables in a short notice. Hence, she promised that they would stick to an "agreed-upon" timetable when the show continued.
Aside from DeGeneres, long-running executive producers, Mary Connelly, Andy Lassner, and Derek Westervelt, would also return to the show.
The controversy surrounding DeGeneres and The Ellen DeGeneres Show started when the YouTube star Nikkie Tutorials, or Nikkie de Jager in real life, revealed her terrible experience when she visited the show's set. Kevin T. Porter then started a Twitter thread that told different people's bad experiences with DeGeneres herself.
From here, BuzzFeed News published a story about the complaints of ten former The Ellen DeGeneres Show staffers and a current employee about the alleged toxic work environment happening on the set. They said, "racism, fear, and intimidation" were happening behind the scenes.
