Ellen DeGeneres

Johnny Carson's Couch

Ellen DeGeneres sat on Johnny Carson's couch in 1986. She was the first female comic to receive that invitation after performing live on The Tonight Show. Carson's gesture was not a courtesy but a professional validation that instantly placed her at the front of American comedy.

Before that moment, she toured mediocre comedy clubs across the country. She did so with a observational, white and somewhat erratic style of humor that avoided political topics. But her true ambition lay in scripted television.

In 1994, she landed her own sitcom, initially titled These Friends of Mine. The show was renamed Ellen in its second season to put the spotlight on her personality. The series performed well in the ratings, although the pressure on her private life grew every month in the newsrooms of Los Angeles.

The Cost of Honesty

In April 1997, she decided that her character on the sitcom would come out as gay. That two-part episode, titled The Puppy Episode, drew 42 million viewers to their TV sets. It was a risky move that no network TV star had attempted before in prime time.

The industry reacted with a mix of applause and fear. Advertisers pulled their sponsorships from the show, and conservative critics went after the production relentlessly. ABC ultimately canceled the show in 1998 after a steep drop in ad revenue.

Nobody called for three years.

She spent a period out of the professional spotlight, finding work only on stand-up tours in small theaters. But in 2003, Pixar called on her to voice a forgetful surgeonfish in Finding Nemo. The film earned more than $940 million worldwide and won back the favor of family audiences.

And the gamble paid off.

The Midday Machine

In September 2003, she premiered The Ellen DeGeneres Show. The format broke with the rigid structure of morning talk shows. She made dancing her signature and moved away from confrontation in favor of consistent kindness toward her guests. The show stayed on the air for 19 consecutive seasons.

During this period, she amassed 64 Emmy Awards for both technical and program achievements. Her influence grew so much that in 2014 she hosted the Oscars ceremony and starred in the most-shared selfie in the history of that social network (then Twitter). Her public image was that of television's most generous woman.

But the story of her perpetual kindness began to crack in 2020. Several journalistic investigations brought to light testimonies from employees describing a toxic and abusive work environment behind the cameras. The host's personal brand suffered reputational damage that proved hard to repair.

It was the end of an era.

In May 2022, the final episode of her daily talk show aired after nearly two decades on the air. DeGeneres turned to her work as a real estate investor and to protecting gorillas in Rwanda through her foundation. In 2024, she returned to the stage with a Netflix comedy special titled For Your Approval, in which she addressed her departure from television.

The production of that final comedy special had an estimated budget of $20 million.