Everyone’s favourite morning show host and LGBTQ activist, Ellen DeGeneres has been accused of having a toxic work environment behind the scenes of her show “The Ellen Show”, many ex-employees and guests have come forward to reveal that she might not be how she seems on television.
A few weeks ago an international portal Buzz Feed posted an article with interviews of around 30 former Ellen Show employees. The employees claimed that Ellen’s “Be Kind” talk show mantra masks a toxic work culture, where the show’s executive producers have been accused of rampant misconduct. Such allegations by several ex-employees haveled to a wildfire of news headlines across the world questioning the credibility of the famous morning show host and resulted in an internal investigation by WarnerMedia.
With the recent allegations, people on social media havestarted to gather information of how Ellen has been rude to her guests in the past. One incident that has caught the most attention of viewers and news personnel around the world is about how Ellen forced Mariah Carey to reveal her pregnancy on the show despite her protests.
To further add to the outrage Ellen even poured her a glass of wine as a test. Unfortunately, Mariah Carey ended up losing that particular pregnancy, months after the show. Neil Breen an Australian host, who interviewed Ellen in 2013 also reported that her production team was a nightmare to work with as they kept micro managing everything and in addition he reports that the team said: “You don’t approach her. You don’t look at her.” Ellen’s former bodyguard who worked with her during the 2014 Oscars reported: “She’s cold.”
When many such stories came out celebrities and friends of Ellen such as Katy Perry and Scooter Braun came to her rescue by calling her a “Kind” & “Thoughtful” human being. On the other hand people like Brad Garret, a frequent guest stated that it was common knowledge that employees were treated badly by Ellen on the show.
In addition, some of the show’s executive producers also came under fire. Reports of sexual misconduct, racist micro-aggressions and people being fired after taking sick leaves have also been reported. According to the Buzz Feed article a former employee reported that after working for a year on the show, they took a medical leave of a month to check into a mental institute for trying to commit suicide. When they came back their position had been filled by someone else.
One black employee reports that she left the show after working there for a year due to racist remarks by one of the writers of the show. They reportedly said: “I am sorry I only know the white employees that we have,” and the other employees just laughed awkwardly.
On top of everything else, allegations of sexual misconduct had also been made against three of the top executive producers of the show – Ed Glavin, Kevin Leman &Jonathan Norman. One of the executive producers had a reputation for being handsy with women and another solicited a lewd act at a work party.
As of recently Ellen DeGeneres has apologised to all her employees in a 100 person conference call. She reportedly went into tears while addressing the issues of a toxic work environment as she never knew what was going on behindher back. Also the three executive producers – Glavin, Leman &Norman have also parted ways from the show because of the sexual allegations against them.
Many people still make the case against Ellen that even though she might not have known what was happening behind her back but, when the show is named after her and she has seen and faced some of dark realities and conditions of Hollywood she needed to have a more hand on approach when it came to the work environment.
