Do we like Ellen DeGeneres?
Our score: 6 out of 10. A long record on the right side, set against 2020 claims of a miserable workplace that she apologised for but said she didn't know about.
Ellen DeGeneres came out on national TV in 1997, when doing so cost a lot, and she paid for it. Barack Obama said as much when he gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, noting that her decision initially hurt her career. She rebuilt, and a few years later landed a daytime talk show that ran for 19 seasons.
The wheels came off in July 2020, when BuzzFeed News reported that current and former staff alleged racism, fear and intimidation on her show, followed by claims of sexual misconduct against senior producers. Those producers' representatives denied or didn't respond, and one denied any impropriety. Warner Bros. ran an internal investigation, said not all of the allegations were corroborated, but found deficiencies in the show's day-to-day management and made staffing changes.
Ellen herself wasn't part of that review, and she declined to comment at first. A source close to the production said it was not about her. She then wrote to staff, saying she was disappointed to learn the workplace hadn't been what she hoped. Critics reckon that's the boss's job to know, and that's the sticking point for a lot of fans.
On the harm test, we found nothing nasty. No slide into conspiracies, and no campaigning against anyone's rights. In 2025 she said, in her own account, that Trump's re-election was the reason she left for the UK, and she worried about same-sex marriage. In January 2026 she said she was proud of people protesting peacefully in Minneapolis. Critics online called that grandstanding, but where you land depends on how you read the protests.
She has addressed the fallout on stage, joking in 2024 about being kicked out of show business and admitting she didn't know how to be a boss. That's more self-awareness than a lot of famous people manage, though she also said the whole thing was a toll on her ego, which some former staff will find thin. It reads as hurt more than as an apology.
The good stuff is real. Her wildlife fund, a 60th birthday present, aims to secure the future of wild gorillas in Rwanda, and she has years of visible support for LGBTQ+ people. The Pixar short is her first acting job in five years, and Pixar had not yet commented when the first reports came out.