Last week, The Ellen Degeneres Show aired the last episode of its farewell season, closing out the show’s 19-year run. The end of the daytime talk show was announced last year amidst allegations of a toxic work environment. The show first premiered in 2003, and so much has changed between then and 2022.
Prior to the conception of the show, Degeneres had been on an ABC sitcom which was canceled shortly after her then “controversial” coming out episode. In her last monologue on The Ellen Degeneres Show, Degeneres says, “25 years ago they canceled my sitcom because they didn’t want a lesbian to be in primetime once a week. And I said, ‘OK, then I’ll be on daytime every day. How about that?’” In 2003, the people that supported Degeneres and the audiences she made laugh turned away from her once she came out as a lesbian.
The Ellen Degeneres Show was her return to the small screen, but even getting it on TV was a challenge.
“Twenty years ago, when we were trying to trying to sell this show, no one thought that this would work. Not because it was a different kind of show, but because I was different. Very few stations wanted to buy the show,” says Degeneres, 19 seasons later. There has been so much progress since 2003, not only for Degeneres but for the LGBTQ community as a whole.
During the last episode, Degeneres reminisces on how she wasn’t allowed to say the words “gay” or “we” on-air, since it would allude to her wife Portia de Rossi; she also definitely couldn’t say “wife” on the show, since marriage equality wasn’t legal at the time. Now, marrying who you love is not only legal, but being openly queer is much more accepted and celebrated in today’s society.
Some of the recent controversy aside, Degeneres contributed to that progress as an openly out lesbian in media.
There’s still so much progress the LGBTQ community is fighting for right now, but as we celebrate Pride Month, let’s remember those who paved the paths before us and how far we’ve come as a community.
Screenshot courtesy of TheEllenShow on Youtube
