Ellen DeGeneres announced that she is ending her talk show after the upcoming 19th season.
The talk show host and comedian made the announcement in a statement earlier today saying, “When you’re a creative person, you constantly need to be challenged – and as great as this show is, and as fun as it is, it’s just not a challenge anymore.”
Ellen explained her reasoning for ending the show as the statement continued.
“I was going to stop after season 16. That was going to be my last season and they wanted to sign for four more years and I said I’d sign for maybe for one,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “They were saying there was no way to sign for one. ‘We can’t do that with the affiliates and the stations need more of a commitment.’ So, we [settled] on three more years and I knew that would be my last. That’s been the plan all along. And everybody kept saying, even when I signed, ‘You know, that’s going to be 19, don’t you want to just go to 20? It’s a good number.’ So is 19,” she said.
DeGeneres had previously hinted that she was contemplating ending her daytime talk show reign in an interview with the New York Times in 2018. In that interview, the comedian explained that her brother, Vance DeGeneres, was against the idea, but her wife, actress Portia de Rossi was in favor of it.
DeGeneres also addressed the growing rumors that she was not kind to her show’s staff, explaining, “That bugs me if someone is saying that because it’s an outright lie. The first day I said: ‘The one thing I want is everyone here to be happy and proud of where they work, and if not, don’t work here.'”
