COVER STORY: THE ELLEN EFFECT
DeGeneres has built an empire on being the nicest, most fun talk show host ever.
‘I’m really proud I’m not adding to the negativity’
She’s possibly the only person who could get Michelle Obama to dance to Bruno Mars’s ‘Uptown Funk’, Barack Obama to recite romantic poetry, and Celine Dion to rap. For these (and other) reasons, Ellen DeGeneres is one of our favourite TV hosts of all time. The Ellen DeGeneres Show, now in its eighth year, continues to make us laugh until we cry. And cry until we… well, cry some more. It continues to bring us really moving stories, and allows us to witness celebrities being pranked, pranking each other, and playing ridiculous games – in short, just being human. James Corden paid her the ultimate compliment recently, saying that Carpool Karaoke wouldn’t exist without The Ellen DeGeneres Show: ‘’cos I’d never seen anyone do a show where it was like, “Oh, we’re just gonna have a great time every day”.’
‘It is a happy show, on purpose,’ says Ellen. ‘I represent happiness to a lot of people. I want to keep myself as open and as nonjudgemental as possible. Our only agenda is to make people feel good. It’s an hour of joy.’
So what inspires her to see the funny side of things? ‘I think my comedy came from observing the little details,’ says Ellen. ‘What’s most important are not the broad strokes, but noticing what’s inbetween. One of my first jokes was the fact that when somebody tastes something disgusting, they always want you to taste it too, like, “This is disgusting – taste it!” And people do!’
Ellen first realised how useful it is to be able to make others laugh as a teenager
‘Our only agenda is to make people feel good. It’s an hour of joy.’
when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. ‘I had to make her laugh. [My comedy] started from me trying to make her happy,’ she says. ‘It felt really good to have the power to make people happy. That’s my talent. Not that I thought I’d make money from it.’
Well, we know how that turned out: in 2015 she made the Forbes List of The World’s Most Powerful Women, with a speculated net worth of over $300 million. But her fortune is not solely derived from the talk show, though the revenue from it allowed her to dabble in a lifelong passion for interior design and renovation that she shares with her wife, actress Portia de Rossi. (Remember the coldly ambitious Nelle Porter in Ally McBeal?). Ellen has flipped around a dozen fixer-uppers, and in 2015 published a beautiful coffee-table book called Home, in which she shares pictures of the new interiors and tips on design. Her style is a sophisticated rustic eclecticism, and she has a penchant for exquisite designer pieces. She has also established an online store, ED by Ellen, which showcases her own brand of clothing, accessories, homeware and pet products.
Her latest TV project is a new animated series based on Dr Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham. Ellen is the executive producer, and it is set for release on Netflix next year. ‘It’s going to be cutting-edge animation; it’s never been done on television before. It’s very, very cool,’ she told her viewers.
Ellen’s Heads Up!, a mobile game based on the game she plays on her show, has been downloaded 25,5 million times and has led to a contract with NBC to host a game show called Ellen’s Game of Games. Her huge success is a mark not only of how far a bit of mindless fun can take you, but also of how much the world needs her particular brand of benign silliness.
‘There’s so much to laugh at without it being at someone else’s expense,’ she told Parade. It’s why she doesn’t do political humour. ‘I never have. [Donald] Trump is being attacked by everybody because it’s an easy thing to do. I don’t. I don’t want to make fun of anybody. It’s not who I am.’ Still, she’s not happy with the US president. ‘I am a very positive, optimistic person, but this is a scary time with a lot of injustice. We have to do something about this. Everybody needs to stand up and say enough is enough.’
Ellen and Portia have been married for eight years. They are both vegan, share similar worldviews and care deeply about animal rights. By all accounts, a happy, über-comfortable life, but not one they take for granted. ‘Portia and I constantly say to each other, “We are so lucky,” Ellen told People magazine. ‘Sometimes, lying in bed at night, I just say thank you to whatever, whoever is out there. I’ve gotten to a place where I really am just… settled. Really. I know that I’m not going anywhere. She’s not going anywhere. I’m not saying the relationship took a while; I’m saying that in my life it took a while to find this.’
Despite the constant media speculation on the matter, Ellen says she and Portia don’t see children in their future. ‘We talked about it for a minute about four years into the relationship, but we just decided we like our conversations not being interrupted and our furniture without sticky grape juice on it,’ she told Sunday Style. So, no kids, but in a gentle jibe to the media, they settled for a dog – named Kid!
She describes family as ‘people who get you. You want to feel that you’re understood, and they know exactly who you are and they know how to take care of you. I don’t think it has anything to do with blood relations.’
This year, Ellen won three People’s Choice awards, bringing her tally to a record-breaking 20. She also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honour that can be awarded to a civilian, from Barack Obama.
Elen is a great fan and personal friend of the Obamas. In her first show after the shock election result that saw The Donald move into the White House, Ellen joked with customary circuitous humour: ‘You may have heard there was a big presidential election on Tuesday. The big winner was alcohol.’
She went on to quote Eleanor Roosevelt’s famous line: ‘It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.’ Ellen lights loads of candles. She regularly gives away large sums of money to viewers, and often features people who are facing a struggle in some way, using her clout to help them. Recently, she teamed up with Pharrell Williams and Lady Gaga for the Revlon campaign The Love Project, which aims to ‘grow more love in the world’.
Even more than being funny or likeable, it’s her kindness Ellen is most proud of. ‘I grew up watching Dick Van Dyke and Lucille Ball, and they were nothing but sweet and funny. It wasn’t ‘negative comment, negative comment, laugh track’. So I’m really proud I’m not adding to the negativity. I’m proud that for the hour that my show is on TV, I’m not being mean, and I’m hopefully helping one other person go, “I’m going to be kind.” Because then it all just kind of spreads, and the world is a little nicer out there.’