Ellen DeGeneres Set to Address Toxic Workplace Claims in Final Netflix Special

DeGeneres is returning to Netflix for the first time since 2018.

By Russ Burlingame

In addition to a stand-up tour set to begin next month, award-winning comedian and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres is set to appear on Netflix for what she says will be her final stand-up special. During her new comedy set, DeGeneres will reportedly address the reports of a toxic workplace culture which led to the end of her run on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the long-running daytime talk show which earned more than 50 Daytime Emmy Awards during its 19 years on the air. The new special, which has no title yet, will be DeGeneres's first since 2018's Relatable, which hit just as rumors were starting to get going that the talk show wasn't the best workplace. The show would end in 2022.

During the course of the talk show, DeGeneres became one of those "first-name celebrities," where if you said "Ellen" in conversation, people would know who you meant. She also appeared in a number of film, TV, and advertising projects, most notably Finding Nemo and its sequel Finding Dory.

"There is nobody quite like Ellen," said Robbie Praw, VP of Stand-Up and Comedy Formats at Netflix. "She is a true legend and pioneer in so many ways. We can't wait to bring fans another one of her hilarious comedy specials later this year."

"To answer the questions everyone is asking me – Yes, I'm going to talk about it," DeGeneres said in a statement. "Yes, this is my last special. Yes, Portia really is that pretty in real life."

DeGeneres rose to fame as a stand-up comedian and actor in the 1990s, culminating in a major pop culture moment when the title character from her sitcom Ellen came out as a lesbian, making her the first mainstream TV lead to do so. The moment became instantly iconic, but Ellen was over within about a year afterwards. In 2001, she unsuccessfully tried to launch another sitcom, The Ellen Show, before finally heading into the talk show space with The Ellen DeGeneres Show starting in 2003.

In 2020, a report from Buzzfeed quoted numerous former employees, saying that the world behind the scenes of the show was toxic. DeGeneres publicly apologized, and within a year, had announced that she would end the series in 2022.

During most of her talk show run, DeGeneres took an extended hiatus from her stand-up career. Following her return to stand-up in 2018 and the end of her talk show, she has served as a producer on the Discovery documentaries Endangered and Saving the Gorillas: Ellen's Next Adventure.

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Ben Winston and Fulwell73 will serve as the Netflix special's producers. No word yet on an exact release date.

h/t Deadline

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