Ellen DeGeneres – who doesn’t know her? The American comedian is a name and face known across the globe thanks to her show ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’ from 2003 to 2022. Well, she entered showbiz in the mid-’90s and left an impression since the start.
DeGeneres has been part of several shows including the ABC series ‘These Friends of Mine,’ ‘Ellen’ and more. But did you know, one of her shows got cancelled soon after she came out of the closet and announced she was gay? Well, that’s what our today’s throwback is about so sit back, read and enjoy!
In an article carried by History, it was during the airing of Ellen DeGeneres’ 1995-’98 show that the comedian and her show character came out as gay. On April 30, 1997, in a widely publicized episode of Ellen, the show’s titular character Ellen Morgan – played by DeGeneres, announced that she is gay. Just weeks before this aired, the comedian came out of the closet.
As per the article, in the fall of 1996, reports began circulating that Ellen DeGeneres‘ character – Ellen Morgan, a bookstore manager, might acknowledge that she was a lesbian. This revelation made Ellen the first prime-time sitcom to feature a gay leading character. Over the next few months, the makers relentlessly encouraged the hype, with DeGeneres also fueling the fire by joking in television interviews that her character was “Lebanese” as well as resisting attempts to clarify her own s*xuality.
It was before the episode aired that DeGeneres made a coming out statement by appearing on the cover of TIME magazine under the headline “Yep, I’m Gay.” While an estimated 42 million viewers watched the April 30th special hour-long episode, the later episodes failed to hold audiences. And by the end of the 1997 season, the show was cancelled due to low ratings. The coming out episode featured several well-known names including Laura Dern -as the woman Ellen falls for, Oprah Winfrey – as the therapist to whom she makes her revelation, k.d. lang, Demi Moore, Billy Bob Thornton and Dwight Yoakam.
Since Ellen got cancelled, Ellen DeGeneres starred in the short-lived CBS sitcom The Ellen Show, providing the voice for a lead character in the 2003 animated blockbuster Finding Nemo and then headlined The Ellen DeGeneres Show in September 2003.
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