Former 'Ellen' Staffers Aren't Buying her Netflix 'Mea Culpa'

In her new Netflix special, Ellen DeGeneres claims she was canceled by Hollywood twice: first for being gay, second for being mean. The special, called "For Your Approval," is the comedian and talk show host's response to her being canceled, largely due to her staff going public on a toxic work environment behind the scenes on her long-running show. "I got kicked out of show business because I'm mean," she announces to her audience early on, before adding ironically: "And you can't be mean and be in showbusiness."

But some of those staffers instrumental in her fall from the public's grace aren't buying DeGeneres' latest attempt to regain the public's attention. Rolling Stone reached out to staffers (story behind a firewall) saying that "continues to invalidate and deny our experiences." Six former staffers spoke to Rolling Stone under anonymity for fear of retribution and claim "DeGeneres conflates rumors about her unpleasant behavior with more serious allegations, made in the summer of 2020, of racism, sexual misconduct, and intimidation at the talk show. Those claims ... led to an internal investigation at the show and the firing of three producers."

"There's a difference between your persona and the way that you were handled in the media versus the culture that you perpetuated which hurt a lot of people," one former employee tells Rolling Stone. "She was misrepresenting the narrative and trying to reframe herself as not a bully...She really missed the mark."

In the special, DeGeneres shows a montage of her rise to fame as a stand-up comic, which in 1994 for her to land a sit-com, named "Ellen." When she came out on the series, she claims she was canceled by Hollywood for the first time. She rebounded with her Emmy-winning talk daytime talk show, which ran 19 seasons. It was for her behind-the-scenes behavior on the show that led her, as she puts it, to be canceled a second time for being mean.

The employees acknowledge the DeGeneres makes a solid attempt at reframing her persona in the 60-minute special, filmed before a live audience in Minneapolis. But she evades the critical point that she presided and participated in a toxic workplace environment. "It feels like it's manipulative," one former employee says. "You're titling the show 'For Your Approval,' which suggests that you're trying to guilt the audience into feeling bad for you, and then you're trying to empower yourself at the same time by saying that you endured all of this hard stuff."

Some acknowledge the fact that DeGeneres claims she was "kicked out of show business" while hosting a hour-long special on Netflix. "Back in 2018, DeGeneres reportedly took home $20 million for her first Netflix special, Relatable. According toThe Hollywood Reporter, she signed a two-special deal with the streamer at the time, which 'For Your Approval' fulfills," writes Rolling Stone.

"She made millions of dollars doing a Netflix special talking about how she got canceled, but by nature of making millions of dollars to do a Netflix special, you were not silenced," one former staffer says. "You were not kicked out of Hollywood. Most people can't get Netflix specials."

Another claims that DeGeneres flunked the role model test when the young staffer went to work on the show, which made their experiences working on the show more disappointing. The staffer empathized with DeGeneres's claims that she was ostracized from the entertainment industry when she came out, but also feels that her experience did not cancel what her employees experienced. "Both things can be true at once," Rolling Stone adds, "according to the former staffer: Hollywood was cruel and discriminatory to DeGeneres, and she allegedly fostered an unwelcoming environment behind the scenes of her show."

"As a young person figuring out my sexuality and also being a huge fan of comedy, she [was] the perfect person to idolize," the employee says. "I have empathy for what she went through back then, and I wish that she could have that empathy now. Especially after all the things she went through, you would think she would try to remember or relate on a human level instead of turning everything into material."

The staffers also claim that DeGeneres implies that these things happened to her – seemingly out of nowhere -- instead of owning her behavior, which continues the narrative that began after comedian and podcast host Kevin Porter ignited the controversy in March, 2020 when he posted a tweet on X that read: "Right now we all need a little kindness. You know, like Ellen DeGeneres always talks about! She's also notoriously one of the meanest people alive. Respond to this with the most insane stories you've heard about Ellen being mean & I'll match every one w/ $2 to @LAFoodBank."

At the top of the special, a version of Porter's tweet appears onscreen, but it redacts his name and isn't verbatim; nor is there any context. At the time DeGeneres had received considerable pushback for defending her friend Kevin Hart having been fired from the Oscars for making anti-gay tweets; her friendship with George W. Bush; and DeGeneres trashing Dakota Johnson for not inviting her to a birthday party. (She was.) Neither Netflix or DeGeneres reached out to Porter about using his tweet, which is why his name and avatar are blurred in the special. Nor is there any mention of the LA FoodBank, which Porter was attempting to raise money for with his incendiary tweet. Porter explains. "My tweet is quite lightweight and a little more juicy gossip...Then [in the Netflix special] it becomes a better scapegoat for the negative attention. It was a pretty masterful reframing and dodge of everything."

Nor did the staffers find her case convincing. "She is a charming person when she tries to be, but it's also hard, because there's a level of artifice to it," one former writer says. "When you've written for her and you've come up with jokes that were supposed to make her seem relatable, now watching it, I'm like, I know all these anecdotes are fake, right? There's nothing true about any of these. So it's harder to think she's funny."

And a critic at the British newspaper The Independent agrees with the staffers. In reviewing the special, Adam White writes, "'For Your Approval,' which is streaming now, is a bizarre, unfunny and self-pitying missed opportunity. DeGeneres has stated that it's her swan song, or a goodbye from showbusiness on her own terms. But it is frustratingly clean, devoid of any real anger or regret, and refuses to depict its star as anything other than an unfairly condemned martyr."