The Ellen Talk Show

The Ellen show is a talk-variety show featuring comic Ellen DeGeneres performing an opening monologue and interviewing guests who include celebrities, newsmakers, and ordinary people with extraordinary talents. The most chaotic, dramatic story in television right now is whatever’s going on offstage at The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Reports of toxic work culture, discrimination, and sexual harassment tarnish the 17-year-old, feel-good talk show’s reputation as a dreamland where celebrities become our closest friends and donations change lives. These accusations have been circulating along time; however, it has been The cracks in this daytime talk show started off thin and narrow: the show became a substantial, powerful daytime TV show over the past two decades, rumors simultaneously circulated that DeGeneres was not as lovely in person as the show portrayed her to be.

The cracks have spread over the past year, and became glaringly apparent during a memorable, uncomfortable interview on her show in November; months later, former employees began speaking up about what a terror it was to work on the show and how Ellen mistreats her employees. The discourse kept growing Celebrities chimed in, some defending DeGeneres and some affirming what former staffers had said. Other previous employees went on the record to address their own negative experiences with DeGeneres. In July, two scathing reports of a nightmare workplace and producers sexually harassing their junior staffers were published, leaving the public image of the show and DeGeneres herself in a mess. DeGeneres acknowledged that the show had its faults.

Though she hasn’t been directly accused of outright malpractice, every part of the show operates under DeGeneres’s name and specific brand of relentless kindness. At best, the patron celebrity TV host of niceness may not have known what was happening to her staffers. At worst, she knew and ignored or even participated in what a toxic workplace her show had become. There’s now a question of whether or not the show will go on. And if it does go on, will people still watch it?