People are continuing to accuse ELLEN DEGENERES of bad behavior.
For the third month in a row, Ellen Degeneres faces criticism about her poor treatment of others
The criticism f lared up in March. That’s when comedian Kevin T. Porter tweeted that Ellen Degeneres is “one of the meanest people alive” and asked others to share negative stories about the talk show host. In April, transgender Youtube star Nikkietutorials summed up her January appearance on Ellen’s eponymous daytime show: “Don’t meet your idols.” The same month, Variety published claims from outraged and frustrated crew members alleging that amid the COVID-19 health crisis, they’d been subjected to huge pay cuts and poor communicat ion about their employment status while Ellen hired non- union staff to film at her home during lockdown.
And the attacks have kept coming. After reading the recent rash of bad-behavior stories, on May 1, the bodyguard assigned to protect Ellen when the comedian hosted the 2014 Oscars decided to publicly reveal his own experience. “When you see her on TV, people fall in love with her but it is a false facade,” alleged Tom Majercak, who left his protection firm last year after a decade on the job. “She’s not the person she portrays.” But now, he added, “People are starting to see her true self.”
A TROUBLING NEW TALE
Ellen, 62, might urge her fans during every show to “be kind to one another,” but that’s not how she treated her protector. “Ellen is the one person that I’ve been assigned to — and I’ve been assigned to quite a few celebrities — that has never taken the time to say ‘ hi’ to me,” he said, adding that her wife, Portia de Rossi, 47, was “very pleasant and carried on a conversation.” But things “started going negatively when [Portia] introduced me to Ellen and Ellen pretty much just gave me a side glance out of her eye and didn’t even say ‘ hello,’ or ‘thank you for protecting my mother, my wife and me,’” Tom shared. “It was very cold and…it was actually kind of demeaning in the way that she treats people other than those who are in her circle.”
She hasn’t responded to the criticism. “Ellen re
fuses to discuss it,” says a source. “She thought the negative stories were just sour grapes, anecdotes from a few haters, that it would subside. But it hasn’t — the onslaught of attacks has been relentless and the hits keep coming.”
Children still like her: Ellen was named favorite talk show host during the online Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards 2020: Celebrate Together event on May 2. But it’s only a matter of time, warns the source, until even more stories emerge — and sympathetic A-list guests start refusing to appear on Ellen: “The floodgates have been opened.”