Ellen DeGeneres has canceled several appearances on her 2024 “Ellen’s Last Stand… Up” comedy tour. The comedian, who began her multi-city stand-up tour in June, has informed fans that the upcoming show in Dallas, Texas, has been canceled.
A notice on the Ticketmaster website reads, “Unfortunately, the Event Organizer has had to cancel your event.” DeGeneres was scheduled to perform at the Music Hall at Fair Park in Dallas on Wednesday, July 10. Ticketmaster has assured fans that those who purchased tickets for the event will receive a refund to the original method of payment.
In addition to the Dallas show, Ticketmaster’s website also notes that the July 23 stop at S. Mark Taper Auditorium in Seattle, WA, and the Chicago Theatre appearance on August 11 are also canceled. However, the Seattle date for July 22 and Chicago dates for August 8 and 10 are still available.
DeGeneres is next scheduled to perform her stand-up on July 8 at Denver, Colorado’s Paramount Theatre. The former daytime talk show host most recently performed for a third night in a row on Tuesday, July 2, at Santa Rosa, California’s Luther Burbank Center for the Arts. During her set, DeGeneres addressed the controversy surrounding her daytime talk show, saying, “Let me catch you up on what’s been going on with me since you last saw me. I got chickens. Oh yeah, and I got kicked out of show business for being mean.”
DeGeneres was referring to allegations that she had created a toxic work environment on her show. She added, “I used to say, ‘I don’t care what people say about me.’ Now I realize I said that during the height of my popularity.” Later, she emphasized, “I am many things, but I am not mean.”
DeGeneres is set to return to Netflix with a new hour-long comedy special later this year, which she says will be her last one. The former talk-show host tackled her public cancellation on the first night of her “Ellen’s Last Stand…Up Tour,” which she says will be taped for a Netflix special this fall.
As she took the stage at the Largo at the Coronet Theater in West Hollywood, DeGeneres was met with roaring applause from a sold-out crowd of about 200 fans. Dressed in a simple black long-sleeved shirt, white pants, and sneakers, DeGeneres addressed the elephant in the room with her first words, “I used to say that I didn’t care what other people thought of me and I realized…I said that at the height of my popularity.”
The last few years have been rough for DeGeneres. Her public image took a hit in 2020 following a series of reports by BuzzFeed News in which employees at her long-running Ellen DeGeneres Show alleged racism, sexual misconduct, and intimidation at the hands of executive producers. Three top producers were fired in the fallout, and DeGeneres issued an on-air apology. Despite her efforts, the show and her popularity seemed not to recover, leading to the end of The Ellen DeGeneres Show in May 2022 after 19 seasons.
Since then, DeGeneres has mostly laid low, save for a 2023 Discovery Channel documentary, “Saving the Gorillas: Ellen’s Next Adventure,” and some routine social media activity. Ellen’s Last Stand…Up Tour represents her first meaningful return to public life since the controversy. It will culminate with a new Netflix special to be taped this fall.
Her Wednesday night set, which she said she’s been working on for about six months, kicked off with a recap of what she’s been up to since her talk-show ended: gardening, wearing a lot of sweatpants, and collecting chickens as pets. She joked about the plight of the chicken who has to lay an egg every day, drawing a parallel to her own daily talk-show routine.
Most of the routine found her grappling with having become Public Enemy No. 1, a stark contrast from her once-firm reputation as the happy-go-lucky talk-show host who ended each episode telling her audience to “be kind to one another.” She mused, “What else can I tell you? Oh yeah, I got kicked out of show business. There’s no mean people in show business.”
DeGeneres continued, “The ‘be kind’ girl wasn’t kind. I became this one-dimensional character who gave stuff away and danced up steps. Do you know how hard it is to dance up steps? Would a mean person dance up steps? Had I ended my show by saying, ‘Go fuck yourself,’ people would’ve been pleasantly surprised.”
DeGeneres seemed to be still processing her experience of the scandal, both the parts she could have controlled and the parts she couldn’t. She said her colleagues at her Emmy-winning talk show felt like family to her, and she had fun playing pranks on them and scaring her guests with goofy pop-up effects onstage. She also admitted that she was an immature boss who “didn’t know how to be a boss.”
She chalked up some of the vitriol she faced at the time to sexism, noting that “there are consequences” for not following the pre-existing rules and gender roles. Referencing the cancellation of her eponymous sitcom in the 1990s after she’d announced to the world that she was gay, she added wryly, “For those of you keeping score, this is the second time I’ve been kicked out of show business…Eventually they’re going to kick me out for a third time because I’m mean, old, and gay.”
The demise of her talk show seems especially painful for DeGeneres since it had been her way back to being embraced after her Nineties exile. “I’m giving stuff away…and I danced, then I was mean and they didn’t like me again,” she said. “It’s been such a toll on my ego and my self-esteem. There’s such extremes in this business, people either love you and idolize you or they hate you, and those people somehow are louder.”
As a 66-year-old woman, DeGeneres said she’s also grown increasingly aware of the aging process both physically and mentally. She finds herself thinking about existential subjects like time and the universe, and said her doctor recently told her she has osteoporosis and arthritis. Plus, she joked, now she’s at a point in her life where she’s obsessing over Wheel of Fortune.
This line of thinking led to poignant moments, as when she mentioned that her mother has dementia and drew a parallel between them, pointing out that they’re both losing a sense of self: The talk show had been DeGeneres’ whole identity and her mother’s identity was being her mother, she said. “And now my mother doesn’t know she’s my mother and I’m trying to figure out who I am without my show.”
Bringing up chickens as another metaphor for women and gender roles, DeGeneres made her point with “one last chicken joke,” as she put it. “Why did the chicken cross the road? Because she wanted to and you wouldn’t ask a rooster that.”
At the conclusion of her set, the crowd gave DeGeneres a standing ovation, prompting her to return to the stage for a candid conversation with the audience. DeGeneres called on people one by one as they asked questions and shared messages of gratitude. One same-sex couple said they had gotten married earlier that day and asked for marital advice. DeGeneres’ wife of 16 years, Portia de Rossi, briefly made an appearance onstage during the Q&A, at fans’ request. DeGeneres explained that the last few years had been very tough on de Rossi as well, saying, “We were both just laying low for a while.”
One woman thanked DeGeneres for her original Netflix comedy special (2018’s Relatable) because it made her mom laugh when she was diagnosed with cancer. Another woman expressed her thanks to DeGeneres for participating in her autistic daughter’s bat mitzvah. One person who said they’d been inspired by DeGeneres’ positivity asked if she used dancing as a means of escape during her recent tough period.
“No. It’s hard to dance when you’re crying,” DeGeneres replied. “But I am dancing now.”
DeGeneres flashed another moment of sensitivity and bewilderment when a fan asked if her first go-round with public scrutiny after coming out prepared her for the next one, when The Ellen DeGeneres Show collapsed.
“This was a whole different thing,” she replied. “This was like, ‘What is going on?’ It was so hurtful. I couldn’t gain perspective. I couldn’t do anything to make myself understand that it wasn’t personal… I just thought, ‘Well this is not the way I wanted to end my career, but this is the way it’s ending.’”
DeGeneres added that it took her a long time to figure out what she wanted to say on the topic and how she wanted to say it.
“Honestly, I’m making jokes about what happened to me but it was devastating, really,” she said. “I just hated the way the show ended. I love that show so much and I just hated that the last time people would see me is that way.”
The final question of the night came from a woman who asked, “Do you think you’ll seek revenge for those who have wronged you?” After a loud round of applause and cheers from every corner of the room, DeGeneres replied, “I don’t know who wronged me. I don’t even know who these people are, so I can’t seek revenge, but I really don’t hold onto stuff. It’s just not who I am.”
Citing the self-help book “The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom,” DeGeneres explained that she’s made her peace with the fact that everyone has their own reasons for making certain choices and “they have to live with their stuff.”
“I do realize that whatever happens may have nothing to do with me, it’s just somebody else’s stuff,” she said. “So no, I will not [seek revenge].”
Source: Ticketmaster, Deadline, SFGate
