Welcome back to the Deep Dive. It is January
2026 and today we are looking at a story that
feels like it just it encompasses the entire
bizarre history of modern celebrity culture.
We're talking the highest highs to well the strangest,
quietest lows. It's a real roller coaster. It
is. I mean, if you were to drive through the
Cotswolds in England right now, you know, past
the rolling hills, the old stone fences, like
classic gloomy weather, you might just stumble
upon a scene that, I don't know, maybe 10 years
ago would have sounded like a complete fever
dream. It really is a fascinating image to conjure
up. Completely surreal. Right. I mean, you have
a woman who was, for a time, maybe the most visible
person on American television, period. Someone
who was literally in our living rooms every single
day. Every single afternoon. And now she is quite
literally across an ocean, apparently surrounded
by chickens, having physically removed herself
from the entire Hollywood ecosystem. We're talking,
of course, about Ellen DeGeneres. It's the ultimate
plot twist in a career full of them. I mean,
if you look at where we are right now in early
2026, the picture is almost unrecognizable compared
to the height of her empire. Not even close.
We're talking about a figure who received the
Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama.
I mean, think about that honor. Someone who hosted
the Oscars not once, but twice. She wasn't just
a talk show host. She was the queen of nice.
And now the narrative is about exile. It's about
this complete reinvention of life. And you can
feel this lingering sense of bitterness. She
actually said it herself recently, didn't she?
That she was kicked out of show business. That's
the quote. And that feeling, that sentiment is
what we really need to unpack today. Our mission
here isn't just to, you know, recite a biography
from Wikipedia. We want to understand the...
mechanics of a rise and fall that drastic. How
do you go from being the most beloved figure
in daytime TV? I mean, truly Oprah's heir apparent
to a cultural pariah. And then finally to this,
this expat retirement in the English countryside.
It's a huge question. And to tackle it, we have
a really comprehensive stack of sources today.
We're looking at biographical records going way
back to the 1950s, career retrospectives, and,
of course, financial reports from Forbes and
The Sunday Times that go right up to 2025. And
we also have all the extensive news coverage,
especially from outlets like BuzzFeed News, surrounding
the workplace investigations that really dismantled
her empire. Exactly. But I think what's going
to surprise people, you know, when we get into
it is that this story doesn't really. start in
a comedy club in the 80s no not at all it starts
much earlier and much deeper in the psyche To
understand why she's in England in 2026, essentially,
you know, hiding away from all the noise, you
have to understand the silence she grew up in.
So let's rewind the tape. We need to go back
to Metairie, Louisiana in 1958. This is where
Ellen Lee DeGeneres begins. Right. And on the
surface, it looks like a very standard mid -century
suburban upbringing. She's born in 58. Her mother,
Betty, was a speech therapist. Her father, Elliot,
was an insurance agent. They were Christian scientists.
Pretty normal stuff. Pretty normal stuff. But
if you dig into the psychological profile of
the family, particularly her father, Elliot,
you find what I'd call the skeleton key for understanding
the entire Ellen brand that comes decades later.
I remember reading about this in the biographical
notes. The way she describes her father is fascinating
and a little unsettling. It wasn't just that
he was a nice guy. It was something more like...
Almost pathological, isn't it? Pathological is
absolutely the right word. In various interviews
over the years, Ellen has described Elliot as
a very fearful man. But specifically, he was
described as someone who physically couldn't
hear or engage with anything unpleasant. Wow.
If something was messy or emotional or difficult
like an argument or a tragedy or just bad news,
he just... He tuned it out. He couldn't handle
it. He would literally act as if it wasn't happening.
So he had this like internal filter that just
blocked out all the bad stuff. Exactly. He created
a bubble, a very fragile one, where everything
had to be fine. He wouldn't acknowledge pain.
Now, you know, think about that for a second.
If you are a child and you're raised by a primary
caregiver who deals with the world by actively
ignoring the ugly parts. You learn a very specific
lesson. You learn a very specific lesson about
survival. You learn that pleasantness is safety
and unpleasantness is a threat that must be ignored
at all costs. Which is just incredibly interesting
when you fast forward 40 years. Ellen builds
a billion dollar empire entirely on the concepts
of be kind and happiness. It's the same bubble.
You have to wonder if that brand wasn't just
a marketing strategy, but a direct inheritance
or maybe even a trauma response. It's a very
plausible connection. I mean, you could argue
she essentially recreated her father's bubble
on a global scale. The message of her show was,
we don't do unpleasantness here, we dance, we
give away cars, we are happy. But the tragedy
is, you can't actually filter out the world forever.
The ugly parts always find a way in. And sadly
for Ellen, the ugly parts found her very early
on. Yeah, we have to talk about the trauma she
experienced as a teenager. This is a heavy pivot,
but it's absolutely crucial to the record. Her
parents divorced in 1974. Her mom, Betty, remarries
a man named Roy Grusendorf. And? They move. They
leave New Orleans and go to a place called Atlanta,
Texas. And this is where things go very dark.
How old was she at this point? She's about 15
or 16 years old. And the context here makes the
abuse even more heinous. Her mother, Betty, had
just been diagnosed with breast cancer. Right.
And this stepfather, Roy, used that diagnosis
as a tool for manipulation. He told Ellen he
needed to examine her breasts for lumps to make
sure she didn't have cancer too. That is just...
It's classic predator behavior, using the fear
of a parent's death to break down every conceivable
boundary. It's grooming 101. And it didn't stop
there. It escalated from these examinations to
him actually trying to break down her bedroom
door to sexually assault her. Ellen actually
had to run away from home. She spent a night
in a hospital just to escape him because she
had nowhere else to go. But here is the part
that adds another layer of tragedy and I think
really calcifies her character for what's to
come. This is when she told her mom. This is
when she eventually told her mother about the
abuse, and her mother didn't believe her. That's
the detail that always gets me. Her mom stayed
married to this guy for another 18 years? 18.
She did. It wasn't until much, much later, when
Roy's stories kept changing and falling apart,
that Betty finally realized Ellen had been telling
the truth all along. But imagine the isolation
of that moment for a teenager. Unimaginable.
You've been abused, and the one person who is
supposed to protect you, your mother, chooses
the abuser's narrative over yours because it's
easier or nicer than confronting the horrific
truth. It forces a kind of fierce independence,
doesn't it? You realize, okay, nobody is coming
to save me. I have to save myself. Exactly. And
you can see that hustle born out of that moment
in her early work life. She didn't have a safety
net. She dropped out of the University of New
Orleans after just one semester and just starts
grinding. The list of jobs she had is like the
lyrics to a working class anthem. Laps, it really
is. I was looking at it earlier. She was a clerical
worker at a law firm. She worked at JCPenney.
She was a waitress at TGI Fridays. She's a house
painter, a bartender. A house painter. It's actually
kind of perfect because it gave her this every
woman perspective. When she eventually started
doing comedy, she wasn't talking about abstract
concepts or, you know, political theory. She
was talking about the weird stuff that happens
when you're painting a house or serving mozzarella
sticks. That relatability was her superpower
from day one. She starts performing at Clyde's
Comedy Club in New Orleans in 1981. And she's
citing influences you'd expect, like Woody Allen,
Steve Martin, Lucille Ball, Bob Newhart. A great
lineup. A great lineup. But the key differentiator
for her, especially in the 80s comedy scene,
which could be pretty rough, was that she was
clean. Right. She wasn't working blue. She wasn't
relying on shock value or offensive material.
It was all observational. And that quirky, clean,
observational style is what got her the golden
ticket. In 1986, she gets booked on The Tonight
Show starring Johnny Carson. And we have to pause
here. For our listeners who might be younger
or who only know the Jimmy Fallon era of late
night, it is impossible to overstate what this
meant in the 80s. It was the kingmaker. There
was no bigger stage. If Johnny Carson liked you,
you were made. And if he called you over to the
couch after your set, that was it. Your career
was launched. And Ellen got the call to the couch.
It was this huge validation of her entire approach.
You can be funny without being mean. You can
be funny without being dirty. Which launched
her directly into the sitcom era. She did a few
short -lived things. First, Open House, Laurie
Hill. But then comes The Big Break, 1994. The
show was originally called These Friends of Mine.
Which is such a 90s title. It is, yeah. And it
eventually just becomes Ellen. And it was huge.
People were calling it the female Seinfeld. It
was just funny observational stuff about a group
of friends living in Los Angeles. It was safe.
It was popular. It was comfortable. But then
we hit 1997. And the comfortable, safe world
of Ellen causes a cultural earthquake. The puppy
episode. I mean, what a moment. I feel like we
have to set the stage for this, for how monumental
it was. In 1997, there were no openly gay lead
characters on American network television. It
just wasn't done. Zero. And Ellen decides not
only is she going to come out in her personal
life, but her character is going to come out
on the show. at the same time. The coordination
of this whole thing was massive. This wasn't
a spur -of -the -moment decision. This was a
media blitz. She's on the cover of Time magazine
with that iconic simple headline, Yep, I'm gay.
And she's on the Oprah Winfrey show, which was
the biggest platform on Earth. And then the episode
itself airs. And Oprah actually plays the therapist
in the episode that Ellen's character comes out
to. Yeah. A brilliant piece of casting. The ratings
were just sky high. 42 million people watched
it. It was a massive cultural moment. But then
the hangover. The backlash was immediate and
severe. We tend to look back at it now through
the lens of progress. Oh, she broke the barrier.
But at the time, it felt like a career suicide
mission. A lot of people thought it was. Advertisers
like Chrysler pulled their ads. Conservative
groups like the American Family Association went
absolutely nuclear. They protested ABC. And the
show itself was canceled after the fifth season
because the ratings dropped. And they dropped
in part because the show stopped being about
nothing like Seinfeld and started being very
much about being gay, which audiences in 1998
just weren't quite ready for every single week.
And Ellen herself went into a deep, deep depression.
She's spoken about this a lot. She felt like
she had been punished for her honesty. She went
from being America's funny, quirky friend to
being this lightning rod for controversy. She
felt completely rejected. Totally. And this is
all happening while she was in a very high profile
relationship with the actress Anne Hetchy. So
the tabloids were just relentless. Her career
basically crashed. And usually in Hollywood,
when a sitcom star crashes and burns like that,
they fade away. Right. They become a trivia answer.
Hey, remember that lady who came out and got
her show canceled? That's the end of the story.
But Ellen managed one of the most improbable
second acts in entertainment history. And it
all started with a fish. Finding Nemo, 2003.
This is such a great story about how careers
can turn on these tiny, unexpected moments. So
the director, Andrew Stanton, was writing this
character, Dory, who had short -term memory loss.
He was struggling with the writing. He had the
TV on in the background. And a rerun of Ellen
was on. And he was just watching her, right?
He was just watching her do her thing, her monologue.
And he watched her change the subject five times
in a single sentence. Just that scattered, rambling,
but incredibly charming delivery. That is so
specific. I love it. And he thought, that's it.
That's the fish. He cast her on the spot in his
mind. And it worked. I mean, it didn't just work.
It was iconic. She won a Saturn Award for voice
acting, which is incredibly rare. It reintroduced
her to a massive audience. And crucially, it
reminded everyone, oh, right, she's funny. She's
charming. We like her. And Dory's innocent. You
can't hate a little blue fish. It totally depoliticized
her image. It did. It completely washed away
the angry activist label that the tabloids and
the right -wing press had tried to pin on her
in the late 90s. And that goodwill, that comeback,
paved the way for the juggernaut, The Ellen DeGeneres
Show. Launching in September 2003. And you have
to remember, the daytime landscape was crowded
back then. You had Sharon Osbourne launching
a show, Rita Rudner. It wasn't a guaranteed win
by any means. Not at all. But Ellen brought something
different to the table. She brought that nice
factor back, but amplified it times a thousand.
It was the dancing. It was the pranks on celebrities.
And, of course, the extreme generosity. The dancing
became such a thing. That was her trademark.
She would dance through the audience at the start
of every single show. It looked like pure, unadulterated
joy. It felt like you were invited to a party.
But reading through the sources now, years later,
she admitted that the dancing eventually became
a real burden. That is the trap of the persona,
isn't it? She said she felt like a performing
monkey sometimes. Even if she was sad, even if
she was tired, even if she was having the worst
day of her life, she had to come out and dance.
If your brand is unrelenting joy, you aren't
allowed to have a bad day. But the formula worked.
My God, did it work. The show won 25 Emmys in
just its first three seasons. That's unheard
of. In total, she racked up 33 daytime Emmys.
She won more People's Choice Awards than any
other individual in history. She became a kind
of comfort in chief for the country. Think about
the timing of when she hosted these big events.
She hosted the Emmys right after 9 -11. And then
again, right after Hurricane Katrina. Exactly.
When the country was hurting, when we felt vulnerable,
they didn't turn to a newsman. They turned to
Ellen to make it feel OK again. That 2001 Emmy
performance post 9 -11 was just masterful. It
was so delicate. She had that famous line, what
would bug the Taliban more than seeing a gay
woman in a suit surrounded by Jews? It broke
the tension perfectly. It was this moment of
defiance, but also of healing. It gave people
permission to laugh again. And then, of course,
the Oscars. She hosted in 2007, becoming the
first openly gay person to do so. And then she
did it again in 2014. We have to talk about the
selfie. The selfie, March 2014. It feels like
this moment of like peak social media innocence,
doesn't it? It really does. She just gets up
from the stage, walks into the audience and gathers
Meryl Streep, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence,
Kevin Spacey, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts. It was
this Avengers level assembly of celebrity. And
she crashed Twitter. Literally. Yeah. The platform
went down. It became the most retweeted tweet
ever at the time. Over 3 .4 million retweets.
It was a moment where her power seemed just.
Absolute. She could command the biggest stars
in the world to huddle together for a bit, and
the entire internet would stop and applaud. And
looking back from where we are now, in 2026,
that moment really feels like the summit. That
was the top of the mountain. It was. Because
while she was being the queen of nice on television,
she was also, behind the scenes, becoming a massive
business tycoon. The business of being Ellen
was incredibly lucrative. By 2020, Forbes estimated
she was earning $84 million a year. New year.
With a net worth of $370 million. By May 2025,
the Sunday Times Rich List in the UK had her
net worth at £363 million, which is even more.
And she diversified so smartly. It wasn't just
the show's salary. It was the Edie Ellen DeGeneres
lifestyle brand. Home goods, apparel, stuff for
pets. Right. She had major partnerships with
PetSmart, with QVC, and that big clothing line
at Walmart called EV1. She was monetizing her
taste level. The whole brand was, you want to
live like Ellen? Here's the throw pillow and
the dog bed to do it. And real estate. We cannot
talk about Ellen's wealth without talking about
houses. She and her wife, Portia de Rossi, were
flipping luxury homes in Montecito and Beverly
Hills like they were pancakes. It wasn't a hobby.
No, it was a serious high -level business for
them. They weren't just buying houses. They were
renovating and flipping them with the aggression
of a hedge fund. Just in August of 2024, they
sold a property in Carpentaria for $96 million.
$96 million. That is just staggering wealth.
That is nation -state money. But there were some
cracks in the armor even back then. The sources
point out this recurring conflict between her
stated values and her business deals. Like she
was a vocal vegan and a huge animal rights activist,
PETA's Woman of the Year in 2009. Right. And
then she became the face of CoverGirl. And CoverGirl's
parent company, Procter & Gamble, was notorious
for testing on animals. Critics jumped on that
immediately. It was a friction point. It suggested
that maybe the brand and the person weren't perfectly
aligned, that maybe the check was more important
than the cause. And speaking of veganism. That
changed too, didn't it? I remember in her 2018
stand -up special Relatable, she confirmed she
had stopped being vegan. Yeah, and her reasoning
was so casual. She just said, for no reason,
really. And that she'd just started eating eggs
and fish again. Which is fine. People's diets
change all the time. But symbolically, it felt
like a loosening of the strict rules she had
set for herself and her public image. And that's
special. Relatable is actually a very important
piece of foreshadowing for the whole collapse.
In it, she jokes about how hard it is to be relatable
when you're fabulously wealthy. She talks about
having a butler. She actively spoofed her nice
image. She was telling us she was basically saying
this is a character. She was. She's telling the
audience, hey, I'm not actually Dory the fish.
I'm a very rich, very powerful woman who runs
a major corporation. But the audience didn't
really want to hear that. They wanted the fantasy.
And then. 2020 happened, the year the Be Kind
brand completely imploded. It started with a
tweet, a single tweet in March 2020. The comedian
Kevin T. Porter started a thread. He called Ellen
notoriously one of the meanest people alive and
asked for stories. And he pledged to donate money
to a food bank for every story people shared.
It was a brilliant hook. And the stories just
poured in. It went viral instantly. Now, usually
these Twitter threads burn out in a day. But
this one didn't. It tapped into this deep vein
of resentment that had clearly been building
in Hollywood for years. It opened the floodgates.
And look, Twitter threads are one thing. It's
often just gossip. But then BuzzFeed News dropped
a bombshell report in July 2020. This wasn't
just Internet chatter anymore. No, this is investigative
journalism. They were speaking with 10 former
employees, mostly on the record, alleging a deeply
toxic workplace. The details in that report were
damning. They described an atmosphere. fear of
racism, of fear, and of intimidation. There were
serious allegations of sexual harassment by executive
producers. People were getting fired for taking
medical leave or bereavement leave. Just brutal
stories. And specifically regarding Ellen, there
were all these complaints that you weren't allowed
to look her in the eye. That if you greeted her
in the hallway, you could be reprimanded by a
producer later. Now, you know, whether every
single one of those anecdotes was true is debatable,
but the sheer volume of them was undeniable.
And the contrast was the killer. That was the
thing. If her show was called The Jerry Springer
Show or if she had a public persona like Gordon
Ramsay, nobody would have cared. Not at all.
But she ended every single episode for 19 years
by looking into the camera and saying, be kind
to one another. The hypocrisy was just too much
for the public to swallow. It goes right back
to that nice defense mechanism we talked about
with her father. If you refuse to engage with
unpleasantness, you might not be the one screaming
at people. But you were creating a vacuum where
other people, like her executive producers, can
scream at people. You just don't want to know
about it. You can claim plausible deniability.
Exactly. It's the shadow side of avoiding conflict.
You become an absentee landlord of your own workplace
culture. So WarnerMedia, the parent company,
launched an internal investigation. Three of
our top executive producers, Ed Glavin, Kevin
Lieben, and Jonathan Norman, were fired. And
Ellen did an on -air apology to start season
18. She took responsibility, saying, I learned
that things happened here that never should have
happened. But the damage was done. The magic
was gone. You could feel it through the screen.
In May 2021, she announced the show would end
the following season. The final episode aired
May 26, 2022. Jennifer Aniston was the guest.
which was a nice full circle moment since she
was the very first guest back in 2003. But it
felt different. It felt like a retreat, not a
celebration. It was a retreat. And Ellen herself
later acknowledged that. In July of 2024, she
explicitly said, I got kicked out of show business
for being mean. That is a direct quote. She felt
deeply personally rejected by the audience she
had served for two decades. So that brings us
to the afterlife, this period from 2024 to where
we are now in early 2026. She tried to process
it all through stand -up again. Yes, her latest
Netflix special, For Your Approval, which came
out in September 2024. And in it, she addressed
the scandal head -on. She was trying to control
the narrative again, trying to find the funny
in being canceled. She was trying to frame it
as, I was a boss and bosses have to make tough
decisions. It didn't quite land with everyone,
though. It didn't. And then... She made a huge
move, a literal move. In November 2024, she and
Portia packed up and left the United States.
They moved to the Cotswolds in England. And the
reporting around this is very specific about
the motivation. It wasn't just, oh, let's retire
to the countryside. It was a reaction to the
political climate. The sources say it was directly
triggered by the reelection of Donald Trump.
They had apparently purchased the home before
the election, but the result... solidify their
decision not to return to the U .S. That is such
a drastic change to go from being America's sweetheart
to basically becoming a self -imposed political
expatriate. It's the ultimate withdrawal, isn't
it? She sold the properties in Montecito. She
sold that massive carpentry estate. She completely
cashed out. She essentially said, I am taking
my ball and going home to another country. But
here we are in January 2026, and the story has
another little twist because reports from last
August, August 2025, said they were already selling
that country home in the Cotswolds. And in a
sort of goofy local appearance she made in Sheltonham
in July 2025, she admitted she was a little bit
bored with just her chickens. It makes sense,
doesn't it? It has to be hard to turn off the
engine of celebrity. You spend 40 years hustling,
performing, being the center of attention, and
then suddenly it's just you, the mud. And the
poultry. That's a huge transition. A huge transition.
Now, she ruled out reviving the talk show, saying
she is done with show business. But that restlessness
selling the UK house so quickly, it suggests
she hasn't quite figured out what the quiet life
actually looks like yet. It's a fascinating place
to leave the story. For now, at least, we have
this woman who broke arguably the biggest barrier
in television history for LGBTQ visibility. She
made kindness a billion dollar brand. And then
she was toppled by the revelation that the brand
was a facade, or at the very least, that she
and her organization couldn't live up to it.
And I think that is the tragedy in the lesson
here. The Queen of Nice was a role she played.
It was a defense mechanism she learned from her
father to survive a traumatic childhood in a
brutal industry. But you cannot perform nice
24 hours a day for 19 years without something
breaking. The pressure must have been immense.
In a way, we, the audience, demanded she be a
saint. And when she turned out to be a flawed,
possibly difficult boss, we tore the statue down.
It really brings up a provocative thought to
end on them. We talked about her father's inability
to handle anything unpleasant. Right. Ellen built
a billion dollar empire on happiness. But a workplace,
by its very definition, involves conflict, stress
and unpleasantness. Was the toxic workplace the
inevitable result of a leader who psychologically
simply refused to engage with the messy realities
of management? That is the question, isn't it?
Did she just tune it out? Like your father taught
her to? And maybe, just maybe, now that she is
geographically removed from Hollywood and the
U .S., she has finally found a place where she
doesn't have to be kind for the cameras. She
can just be Ellen. Whatever that means now. Exactly.
And we should acknowledge, before we go, the
wildlife conservation work she is still doing,
the Ellen DeGeneres Wildlife Fund, the work with
gorillas in Rwanda, that passion seems genuine
and ongoing. It's a part of her legacy that exists
entirely outside of the ratings and the tabloids.
It is. And perhaps that is where she will find
her peace in this next chapter. Not in the applause,
but in the silence of nature. Thank you all for
listening to this deep dive into the complex,
contradictory life of Ellen DeGeneres. We'll
catch you on the next one.