When Hollywood wouldn't cast Ellen anymore - Sitcoms Online Message Boards

TMC · 04-20-2018, 01:03 AM

http://www.nickiswift.com/118816/hol...ellen-anymore/

Quote:

She knew it wouldn't be easy.*When Ellen DeGeneres proposed having her character, Ellen Morgan, come out on the ABC sitcom Ellen in 1997, she was expecting some resistance … and she got it.*

The show ended "because I came out," DeGeneres told The Armchair Expert in 2018. "[Execs] really didn't want me to come out … I said 'It's my life … I'm going to lose the career. Like, you can just put another show on.'"*

As Ellen*lumbered into its fourth season, ratings were slumping*and producers were low on story ideas. DeGeneres, who came out in real life right around the same time as her character, told*Time*in 2001 that she made the move "selfishly for myself, and because I thought it was a great thing for the show, which desperately needed a point of view."*Forty-two million people tuned in to the episode, which featured cameos by Oprah Winfrey as Ellen's therapist and Laura Dern as her love interest.*

No one could have anticipated the backlash that followed: a bomb scare, hate mail, advertisers such as J.C. Penney and Chrysler unexpectedly*dropping out. Jerry Falwell, perhaps inevitably, christened the comedian "Ellen DeGenerate," a pun she told Time*she'd been hearing "since fourth grade. I guess I'm happy I could give him work."*

Little did she know her career would be taking the kind of nosedive everyone fears. She essentially become an industry pariah. "I had no idea the amount of hate," DeGeneres told the Associated Press in 2017. "It was a really scary time."

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Impressions · 05-26-2018, 10:04 AM

It's amazing how times have changed. I was shocked to read that Chrystler and J.C. Penney's dropped out as advertisers when Ellen came out. If they did that today in protest of a LGBT character on a sitcom, people would boycott THEM and probably protest them for being so anti-LGBT. Like total 180.

TMC · 05-08-2022, 02:25 AM

Weren't there rumors that Ellen was nasty back when she had her sitcom? It's not just because of her post-coming out blackballing.

05-26-2018, 10:04 AM	#2
Impressions She died the way she lived Forum 4000 Club Member Join Date: May 08, 2002 Posts: 4,640	It's amazing how times have changed. I was shocked to read that Chrystler and J.C. Penney's dropped out as advertisers when Ellen came out. If they did that today in protest of a LGBT character on a sitcom, people would boycott THEM and probably protest them for being so anti-LGBT. Like total 180.

05-08-2022, 02:25 AM	#3
TMC Member Forum Idol Join Date: Jan 09, 2001 Posts: 124,493	Weren't there rumors that Ellen was nasty back when she had her sitcom? It's not just because of her post-coming out blackballing.