Ellen DeGeneres is ‘telling show executives she’s had enough’

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Ellen DeGeneres may be ready to call it quits on her daytime talk amid claims she perpetuated a toxic work environment, DailyMail.com can reveal. 

An insider at Telepictures tells DailyMail.com that the host is telling executives at Telepictures and Warner Bros that she has had enough and wants to walk away from the show.  

‘She feels she can’t go on and the only way to recover her personal brand from this is to shut down the show,’ they said. 

‘The truth is she knew what was going on, it’s her show. The buck stops with her. She can blame every executive under the sun – but Ellen is ultimately the one to blame.’

On Friday, Ellen was nowhere to be seen as her wife Portia de Rossi was pictured out in Los Angeles amid the drama. 

The 47-year-old Australian actress – who has been married to Ellen since 2008 – went solo as she took the couple’s three dogs for a walk. 

Portia failed to raise a smile as she shielded her eyes behind dark sunglasses while making her way to her car with the canines.  

It comes as staff at the Ellen DeGeneres Show are hitting back at her for shifting the blame to her executive producers in an apology memo sent this week.

‘Don’t think for a minute anything she has said in that apology means anything. She created and then enabled this toxic culture to go on for so long,’ one staffer, who spoke to DailyMail.com on condition of anonymity, said. ‘If anyone had come to her or those three vile [executive producers] to complain, they would’ve been fired.’

‘Inside Telepictures we’ve had enough of her. She is a phony who does not practice what she preaches,’ our Telepictures source said. 

‘The behavior of her show executives has been appalling, but [Ellen] is no better. In fact, she is the worst. It’s outrageous that she is trying to pretend that this is all a shock to her. The fish rots from the head, and Ellen is the head.’

Our Telepictures insider claims that Ellen ‘hates coming to work’ and ‘struggles to be nice to people and has utter contempt for her audience.’ 

‘She has been phoning it in for so long, and only staying for the money and celebrity it affords her,’ they said. ‘We’ve dealt with her BS for so many years, she’s not innocent at all, she’s not nice and the show is not filled with happiness.’ 

The claims of Ellen’s  toxic work environment were revealed earlier this month by one current and 10 former employees of the daytime talk show who accused the three executive producers, Ed Glavin, Mary Connelly and Andy Lassner, of ‘bullying.’ 

Ellen came out with an apology after it was announced earlier this week that her show was now subject to a probe by WarnerMedia which will look into ‘staff experiences on set’. 

However our source claims that the backlash may cloud the show’s success in the future and it could be time to end things.  

‘At this point, there’s really no way to save the show from this PR nightmare, so Ellen leaving may be the only way for this entire mess to go away.

‘While it is our most profitable show in daytime, we no longer make the money we used to make from the show, as we have to pay her tens of millions of dollars per year to show up.’

The insider says Telepictures will need to develop a new show and star quickly to take over the lucrative timeslot that Ellen currently holds.  

‘We thought our problems were with the cast upheaval at The Real, we had no idea that Ellen would implode during quarantine,’ they added.  

Ellen recently sent her staff a memo in which she wrote she was ‘taking steps… to correct’ issues with her employees after several complaints and an internal investigation into the supposed bad behavior was launched.

‘On day one of our show, I told everyone in our first meeting that The Ellen Degeneres Show would be a place of happiness – no one would ever raise their voice, and everyone would be treated with respect. Obviously, something changed, and I am disappointed to learn that this has not been the case. And for that, I am sorry,’ Ellen said in the memo. 

‘As we’ve grown exponentially, I’ve not been able to stay on top of everything and relied on others to do their jobs as they knew I’d want them done. Clearly some didn’t,’ she added. ‘That will now change and I’m committed to ensuring this does not happen again.’ 

But multiple staff members at the show tell DailyMail.com they are not buying Ellen’s apology and are calling on her to call it quits.  

One staffer said, ‘She’s only addressing this now because the publicity is so bad for her and her BS brand of happiness and kindness. Ellen can throw everyone else under the bus, but the buck stops with her.

‘Whenever she’d tell viewers to choose kindness, I’d throw up a little in my mouth because she always chose the opposite,’ they added. 

Among the allegations was one made by a Black woman who claimed she suffered a number of ‘microaggressions,’ her request for a raise was ignored and she was accused of ‘walking around looking resentful and angry’ after asking for staff members to undergo diversity and inclusion training.

Another former employee alleged they were fired after taking medical leave for one month following a suicide attempt.

Even Everybody Loves Raymond actor Brad Garrett chimed in Thursday in a tweet, saying, ‘Sorry but it comes from the top ⁦@TheEllenShow. Know more than one who were treated horribly by her.⁩ Common knowledge.’ 

Our source said: ‘She was happy to put her name on the show, yet she let those three executive producers do whatever they wanted. The fish rots from the head and Ellen and the three of them are now rotting.’

They also claimed Ellen and her executive producers will be on a ‘witch hunt’ now to find who spoke out against them.

‘Don’t think for a second that there won’t be a witch hunt to find out who went public with the worst kept secret in television,’ they said. ‘Ellen is mean. She’ll want vengeance for all of this coming out.’ 

A popular claim that has circulated is that staff members were instructed not to speak to Ellen, and our source corroborated that claim. 

‘She kept herself isolated from the staff. You can’t go up and talk to her, heck, you can’t even get within a mile of her on the lot,’ they said. 

In addition to these claims, the show was rocked again on Thursday when three dozen employees of the daytime talk show alleged that senior executives who work behind the scenes groped and kissed staffers, solicited one of them for oral sex, and were ‘handsy with women.’ 

Jonathan Norman, a co-executive producer, is alleged to have ‘groomed’ a former employee by taking him to concerts and showering him with other gifts and perks before attempting to perform oral sex on him. Kevin Leman, the show’s head writer and executive producer, is alleged to have solicited oral sex from an employee. Others say they witnessed Leman grope another colleague.

And Ed Glavin, an executive producer, allegedly ‘had a reputation for being handsy with women,’ according to former employees. 

The former staffers told BuzzFeed News that they believe the host knew that several of her senior showrunners and producers were alleged to have committed sexual misconduct against junior-level employees.  

Current employees are now calling on Ellen to call it quits. 

‘Warner Bros should cancel our show or swap her out for a fun celebrity host. Viewers have been fed lies for years. The Ellen you see on TV is disingenuous and inauthentic. She’s a horrible person who has done nothing to support 99% of the people who work for her.

‘Yet they won’t cancel it as all they care about is money and the show is a cash cow.

‘It’s time for Ellen to leave TV. She’s done enough damage. They should replace her with someone wonderful like Jen Aniston. She’s always a dream when she comes by – gracious, kind and funny and we’re actually allowed to look her in the eyes!!’

A source initially told Buzzfeed that the executive producers feel that ‘everybody who works at The Ellen Show is lucky to work there: ‘So if you have a problem, you should leave because we’ll hire someone else because everybody wants to work here.”  

Executive Producer Andy Lassner tweeted with confidence on Thursday that ‘nobody is going off the air’.

Our source said: ‘Many of us have a theory that Ellen behaves this way as a mechanism to protect herself. She was so damaged when her sitcom was canceled after she came out that she chose to keep people at a distance in order not to get hurt should this show be canceled. Yet 17 seasons later it’s still on the air and she’s so powerful now she thought she could do whatever she wanted.’  

One staffer told DailyMail.com: ‘Even though our show is crumbling around us, it’s liberating for everything to come out into the open.’