Although she's known for asking her viewers to "be kind" to one another, Ellen DeGeneres
has courted her fair share of controversy. Whispers of her alleged lack of empathy have
followed her over the years, reaching a fever pitch in 2020. Here are some of Ellen DeGeneres'
most controversial moments.
DeGeneres made history in 1997 by confirming rumors that she was gay. In a much-hyped episode
of her ABC sitcom Ellen, her character came out of the closet.
"I'm gay."
DeGeneres followed the TV reveal with an appearance on the cover of TIME under the headline, "Yep,
I'm Gay", a move that was accompanied by plenty of backlash. An ABC affiliate station in Birmingham,
Alabama refused to show the episode, and DeGeneres' co-stars even endured threats to their lives
for starring alongside her.
Televangelist Jerry Falwell called DeGeneres "Ellen DeGenerate" in response to the episode,
with DeGeneres responding in a TIME interview,
"Really, he called me that? Ellen DeGenerate? I've been getting that since the fourth grade.
I guess I'm happy I could give him work."
DeGeneres also urged the country to move on from seeing her sexuality as a fascination,
saying,
"I mean, I understand the curiosity and I understand the not understanding of it. But
let's get beyond this, and let me get back to what I do. Maybe I'll find something even
bigger to do later on. Maybe I'll become Black."
To this day, the episode is still seen as a boundary-breaking Hollywood moment and a
meaningful controversy for DeGeneres, who would be accused of some less-uplifting dramas
in the decades to follow.
DeGeneres and Kathy Griffin's alleged feud stretches back years, beginning with some
late-2000s drama in which DeGeneres claimed that Griffin lashed out after she didn't book
her on The DeGeneres Show. In a 2007 interview with W, DeGeneres called Griffin, quote, "very
mean," and claimed,
"She did a whole thing that I banned her from the show. I didn't ban her from the show,
because first you have to be on the show to be banned."
The drama resurfaced when Griffin claimed in her 2016 book Kathy Griffin's Celebrity
Run-Ins: My A–Z Index that, quote, "a certain beloved daytime talk show host [with] short
blonde hair," had her "kicked out" of an Emmys dressing room, and added,
"[Ellen] has a mean streak that all of Hollywood knows about."
Griffin later confirmed to the Daily News that she was referring to DeGeneres. Shortly
after, Griffin told Access Hollywood that DeGeneres called her up, quote, "furious"
about her claims, and that Griffin was left "sobbing" after the conversation.
"I said, 'Ellen this is my experience with you.' I said, 'You've been mean to me, I'm
not saying you're a mean person across the board, but you can't, like, take my story
away, it's, like, my experience.'"
Griffin also incorporated her beef with DeGeneres into her set on her 2018 Laugh Your Head Off
tour. According to Variety, Griffin spoke about fighting with DeGeneres over the passing
of Joan Rivers, with DeGeneres allegedly saying about Rivers,
"There's a difference between mean and funny."
Griffin recalled lashing back at DeGeneres, calling her a, quote, "untalented hack."
DeGeneres, who once worked at the department store J.C. Penney as a sales associate, partnered
with the chain in 2012 for a sponsorship deal. The move prompted outrage from anti-LGBTQ
critics who called for boycotts of the store and for DeGeneres to be cut loose from the
deal.
According to Yahoo! Life, the conservative group One Million Moms wrote on their official
website,
"Funny that J.C. Penney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business
when most of their customers are traditional families. The majority of J.C. Penney shoppers
will be offended and choose to no longer shop there."
In response, J.C. Penney issued a public statement standing behind the company's choice of DeGeneres,
with DeGeneres defending herself on an episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, claiming that
the idea of her leading a, quote, "pro-gay bandwagon" was a fallacy. She told her audience,
"[One Million Moms] wanted to get me fired and I am proud and happy to say that J.C.
Penney stuck by their decision to make me their spokesperson...Being gay or pro-gay
isn't a bandwagon. You don't get a free ride anywhere. There's no music. And occasionally
we'll sing 'We Are Family' but that's about it."
DeGeneres landed in hot water in 2016 for a tweet about the Jamaican runner Usain Bolt,
who had appeared on DeGeneres' talk show in 2015. After an image of Bolt smiling as he
crossed a finish line went viral during the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, DeGeneres shared
a Photoshopped image of her riding on Bolt's back, along with the caption,
"This is how I'm running errands from now on."
Backlash arrived swiftly after DeGeneres shared the post, with Twitter critics branding the
tweet as racist. One commenter wrote,
"So the first thing that pops in your head when looking at this pic is 'Oh let me jump
onto his back like he's a common mule?'"
According to ABC News, another user tweeted,
"Despite its intentions this pic has ugly connotations [coming] from a rich white lady."
Following the wave of social media criticism, DeGeneres responded to the negative buzz in
an additional post, writing,
"I am highly aware of the racism that exists in our country. It is the furthest thing from
who I am."
Bolt, who retweeted the image, apparently didn't have any hard feelings towards DeGeneres,
since he appeared on another episode of her talk show that next month.
Rumors began to surface in 2017 about unrest on the set of DeGeneres' talk show, which
would reverberate around Hollywood over the next several years. In a 2017 Radar Online
report, sources painted a picture of DeGeneres as an on-set tyrant, saying,
"[Ellen] treats staffers as if they are her peasants [and doesn't allow employees to speak
to her] or even look her in the eye."
Reports of tensions between DeGeneres and her staffers resurfaced when Hollywood shut
down in spring 2020, with a scathing Variety report claiming that DeGeneres kept her crew
members, quote, "in the dark" regarding their job status, and hired non-union workers to
replace the majority of her employees when she launched her remote broadcasts.
Despite the fact that some of her crew had been with the show since its premiere in 2003,
DeGeneres allegedly only brought back several of her team members to film from her mansion.
To make matters worse for DeGeneres, around the same time as the reports of her staffing
drama emerged, a Twitter thread went viral that collected stories of DeGeneres' alleged
Hollywood rudeness. Calling DeGeneres the, quote, "meanest person alive," the thread
included accounts from former employees claiming DeGeneres, quote, "never once said hello back"
to staffers, fired them after their maternity leave and, quote, "created the most toxic
environment for her staff."
According to Bachelor star Corinne Olympios [uh-LIM-pee-ose], who appeared on DeGeneres'
show in February 2017, the host isn't as kind to her on-screen talk-show guests as she may
appear. Months after her appearance, in November 2017, Olympios recounted her experience with
DeGeneres on the since-cancelled podcast The Morning Breath. Olympios claimed that her
time on-set of DeGeneres' show made her, quote, "so uncomfortable" and that DeGeneres was,
quote, "very aggressive."
Olympios also remembered a particularly unnerving moment when she saw DeGeneres backstage. She
explained,
"She was very cold when I saw her before the show, which I don't think I was supposed to,
because everybody got very nervous when we bumped into each other and you could tell
they were like, 'Oh, s---.'"
Olympios then claimed that she "still loves" DeGeneres.
As one of Hollywood's most high-profile LGBTQ personalities, DeGeneres received widespread
criticism in January 2019 when she came out in support of comedian Kevin Hart after he
lost his gig hosting the 2019 Academy Awards over homophobic comments he'd made in the
past. The Hollywood Reporter noted that one of Hart's controversial comments was a joke
he made in 2010 about his son Hendrix, claiming,
"If I can prevent my son from being gay, I will."
After Hart stepped away from his Academy hosting role, DeGeneres invited Hart onto her show
in a public show of forgiveness, revealing that she had contacted the Academy in an attempt
to help Hart win back the hosting job. She later wrote in a tweet,
"I believe in forgiveness. I believe in second chances. And I believe in [Kevin Hart]."
Following the interview, some voices on the Internet smeared DeGeneres as a hypocrite
and claimed she wasn't a true advocate for LGBTQ issues, with Vogue asking,
"Why is DeGeneres trying to rehab Kevin Hart as Oscars host?"
The Ringer called their conversation, quote, "a baffling exercise in celebrity self-preservation."
Over on Twitter, one critic asked DeGeneres,
"How do you, a white woman, decide who gets to receive an apology where you were never
the target of the comments?"
In October 2019, TV cameras spotted DeGeneres sitting in box seats at a Dallas Cowboys game
next to former President George W. Bush. DeGeneres drew sharp criticism for the appearance, with
the internet pointing to Bush's opposition to marriage equality and wars in the Middle
East as reasons for DeGeneres not to be goofing around with the former president.
Actor Mark Ruffalo referenced DeGeneres' frequent on-air request for viewers to "be kind" when
he tweeted,
"Sorry, until George W. Bush is brought to justice for the crimes of the Iraq War, (including
American-lead torture, Iraqi deaths & displacement, and the deep scars, emotional & otherwise,
inflicted on our military that served his folly), we can't even begin to talk about
kindness."
After the footage of her appearance with Bush went viral, DeGeneres took a moment during
her talk show to defend herself, telling the audience,
"I'm friends with George Bush. In fact, I'm friends with a lot of people who don't share
the same beliefs that I have. We're all different, and I think we've forgotten that that's okay,
that we're all different."
DeGeneres drew jeers online after a comparison she made about her lavish home studio, where
she began broadcasting after filming in Hollywood shut down in March 2020. In a clip from the
April 2020 episode, which has since been removed from streaming, DeGeneres joked,
"One thing that I've learned from being in quarantine is...this is like being in jail,
is what it is. It's mostly because I've been wearing the same clothes for 10 days and everyone
in here is gay."
Critics responded by tweeting photos of DeGeneres' cliffside, five-bedroom, ten-bathroom estate,
which she allegedly purchased in 2019 for $27 million. One user tweeted,
"People in jail can't practice social distancing, don't have enough water or toilet paper and
are going to die at exceptional rates from Covid-19. Except for that, Ellen, your quarantine
experience is just like being in jail."
DeGeneres struck quite a different tone in the clip from the episode that remained online,
clapping and telling the camera,
"Usually I walk out and people applaud me, but today I'm applauding you, nurses, doctors,
hospital staff, first responders, supermarket employees, truck drivers, everyone who keeps
us going, thank you so much."
Count DeGeneres among the celebrities who landed in hot water after their social media
posts supporting the Black Lives Matter movement backfired. According to Insider, DeGeneres
wrote in a since-deleted tweet in May 2020,
"Like so many of you, I am angry and I am sad. People of color in this country have
faced injustice for far too long. For things to change, things must change."
DeGeneres' vague language was lampooned on social media, with one critic writing,
"Can't stop thinking about Ellen tweeting 'For things to change, things must change'
it's just so powerful."
Another user called her statement, quote, "meaningless." DeGeneres responded to the
backlash by deleting her original post and sharing a new video in June 2020, saying she'd
been refraining from broadcasting about Black Lives Matter. She told the camera,
"I don't know what to say. I am so sad, and I am so angry, and I know I'm not going to
say the right thing, I know that a lot of people are going to be in disagreement with
what I say."
DeGeneres proceeded to post an additional clip from a forthcoming talk show broadcast,
acknowledging that she's capable of doing more work to, quote, "educate [herself]" and
claiming,
"I want to learn how to be a better person."
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