[APPLAUSE]
Hi.
How are you?
I haven't seen you in so long, and I'm
sorry you can't be here.
Hey, no worries.
I'm on the East Coast holed up here with my family,
and we're making the most of it.
It's nice to see you.
I miss you as well.
It's great to see you.
And when you've been here before,
you've done so many amazing magic tricks.
Are you still doing magic or have you kind of moved on?
I magic a bit.
I tend to now buy things at auction,
little cool magic props, and then hoard them
and learn how they work.
But you don't really have-- poor magicians right now
don't have much of an opportunity
to be able to perform in front of an audience
like they used to.
Do you remember this?
We're showing this.
Oh my gosh.
You did this trick, which is unbelievable, where supposedly
a head went off in the bucket.
And then we went to-- it was your head--
we went to break.
And we got so many emails asking if you were OK.
Like literally, the head came off.
And we got emails asking if you were OK.
And yeah, thank you.
If I'm not mistaken, you had to apologize the next day
on the show, because people legitimately thought
that you had decapitated me.
Right, like--
That's a prop from my great friend
who you can see there on the left.
His name is Ed Alonzo, and he thought
that would be a really funny idea.
And we thought it would be funnier
if then you just cut to commercial after that happened.
You look at Ed, and you--
We thought it was funny too.
We thought it was funny, too.
And we had to explain.
I mean, even during sweeps, we're not going to go that far.
That's not what we do.
I think it was kind of a slow news day.
Yeah, yeah.
How are you?
How's your family?
I know that you all-- did you have
COVID all at the same time?
Indeed, yeah, I was filming The Matrix 4 in San Francisco
right at the beginning of the year, and then I came back,
and it was right at the end of March,
I started feeling not so well.
We were holed up.
The lockdown started.
And then I lost my sense of taste and sense of smell.
And I thought, oh no, not only do I have COVID,
but we've all been in the same room together.
And so David got it, and Harper and Gideon got it.
Our friend Michael, who is staying with us, got it.
It was early on.
So it was a little bit tenuous and scary.
There weren't a lot of examples of anything.
But no one had to be hospitalized.
And you guys, you had it as well, didn't you?
I had it, but Portia never got it.
So it's weird.
And nobody near me got it.
My hair and makeup, nobody even close-- it's weird.
Some people-- it's a strange thing.
But I'm glad that everybody's OK now.
How old are the twins?
Harper and Gideon are 10 years old.
They're in the fourth grade.
And they're just kind of miraculous.
I miss them so much.
They're super fun.
They're in school all of a sudden.
We've been doing remote school since March, really.
And then the school opened up.
So as of last week, they were able to be--
with all the protocols, the masks
and six feet apart and getting tested all the time,
but they're in actual school.
So Ellen, I'm free.
[LAUGHTER]
A lot of parents are clapping right now.
I see a lot of people being very happy about that.
OK, I don't to run out of time, because we're playing
a game in the next segment.
Let's talk about It's A Sin.
First of all, I watched all five last night.
Oh, awesome.
Yeah, it's amazing.
It already aired in the UK.
People love it.
Elton John called the cast to say how much he loved it.
The music, because it's like from the '80s, there's like--
I haven't heard Sylvester in I don't know how long.
There's great music in it.
But tell everybody about it.
Yeah, it's a five part mini series
done by Russell T Davies who's just fantastic.
He did A Very English Scandal and Years and Years
and Doctor Who for a long chunk of time.
He did the original Queer as Folk, the UK version,
which was a big profound moment for me in coming out.
That was a great example of how people could
be gay and proud and sexy.
And I really wanted to work with him on any level.
And he wrote this sort of five piece drama about HIV/AIDS
in the '80s in the UK and how it started.
And you follow this really vibrant group
of kids, five kids, there they are, and they--
it's really beautifully done.
I played that one in the middle.
His name is-- his actual name is--
the actor is Callum Scott Howells,
and his character's name, Colin, and I'm sort of his mentor
through it.
And it's just--
I don't know.
It's a very interesting thing.
Russell created this piece that talks
about a period of time that hasn't been really discussed
on film before and a lot of--
an entire generation, Ellen, you probably know this,
they don't really know about HIV/AIDS at all.
And on the one hand, that's a great thing,
because it's not quite the scary terrible thing
that it was then.
At the same time, I think it's very important
to know your histories and to know where it came from
and to be able to watch it in this way
where not only are you aware of the consequences and not only
are you watching it from an interesting perspective
and it's very emotional, but it also,
I think, hopefully, you can attest,
it has like a heartbeat to it.
There's a vibrancy to it.
It's kind of-- it's sexy and alive at the same time.
So to be able to be a part of something that
educates all kinds of people, and also is exciting
and sort of a fun watch as well, that's
kind of the dream as far as acting goes.
Yeah, I thought it was really well done.
I loved the cast.
Again, you were fantastic in it.
And--
I appreciate that a lot.
David and I adore you and Portia and your--
I was hopeful that you would have watched it.
And the fact that you liked it means a lot.
So thank you.
Yeah, of course, I mean, and that's how--
I mean, I watched all five last night.
I was just-- because I knew I was talking to you today,
and I thought I'll get to one or two.
But I just went all through them.
It was great.