When Ellen Was Forced To Stop Her Show, She Hauled Up Her Assistant And Told Her To Turn Around

Everything seemed to be running normally on the set of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Ellen herself sat comfortably in her signature red chair and linked effortlessly to a man located outside of the studio. So far, nothing very unusual was happening on the show – but then things took an altogether more surprising turn.

The segment went awry

It’s not uncommon, though, for an Ellen Show segment to veer into the unexpected. And perhaps that’s just one reason why the daytime series is so widely watched. As of 2020, in fact, it ranks 12th on polling company YouGov’s list of the “most popular contemporary TV shows in America.”

Rollercoaster career

The Ellen DeGeneres Show first aired on September 8, 2003, with the eponymous actress and comedian in the role of host. And Ellen had created the talk show after a rollercoaster career in television. Famously, for four years from 1994, she even had her own self-titled ABC sitcom.

Her eponymous sitcom

Ellen became hugely popular in its own right, in fact. But unfortunately, the series’ fortunes changed in 1997, when its star opened up about her personal life on an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show. There, the actress revealed to the world that she was gay – and on a later episode of her sitcom, the fictionalized version of her did, too.

The epic comeback

After that, ABC supposedly stalled on its advertising of Ellen, with this move later being held responsible for the show’s dropping ratings. Then the series was axed completely in 1998, and its star practically disappeared from TV as a result. But while Ellen went on to attempt a comeback in 2001, she wouldn’t taste further success until the launch of her talk show two years later.