Ellen DeGeneres has been given a special on the biggest streaming platform in America and essentially guaranteed an audience of millions to say: “I have been kicked out of show business.” The special For Your Approval has been billed as her final stand-up set before she retires from public life, and in it, she promises to get personal about her life, specifically about the end of her talk show after 19 seasons.
“The ‘Be Kind’ girl wasn’t kind, that was the headline,” DeGeneres says in the trailer. “Here’s the problem. I’m a comedian who got a talk show and I ended the show every day by saying, ‘Be kind to one another.’ Had I ended the show by saying, ‘Go fuck yourselves,’ people would have been pleasantly surprised to find out I’m kind.”
DeGeneres is not the first talk-show host to deal with allegations that she was shitty to her staff. Both Jimmy Fallon and James Corden have dealt with similar allegations. Fallon has mostly weathered them, while Corden has also ended his talk show. The claims against DeGeneres had been an open secret in the industry for many years, but they finally erupted during the pandemic.
“I thought, if I could make people happy, they’ll like me,” DeGeneres says in the trailer, asserting that she went into comedy to heal her childhood wounds. “And if they like me, I’ll feel good about myself. And all I can say about that is, thank God for the money.”
For Your Approval will stream on Netflix on September 24th. The discourse around it is going to be insane.
