(This story contains spoilers for Ellen DeGeneres: Your Need for Approval.)
Ellen DeGeneres will have the last laugh.
In her latest (and likely final) stand-up special, available on Netflix, the former daytime talk show host talks about how she got “cast out of show business” and uses it for laughs. But in between the punch lines, there are also moments of sincerity and heartfelt reflection. “I’m here because I love stand-up. I miss doing stand-up. I love making people happy and I care what people think,” Ellen DeGeneres confesses at the start of the special, aptly named “Ellen DeGeneres: Give Me Your Approval.”
In case you missed the many headlines of 2020, DeGeneres’ eponymous talk show was hit by toxic workplace allegations on the heels of a series of personal criticisms against her. Though she maintains that neither was what ultimately caused her to end the long-running show, she has been open about the heartache the controversy caused. “Here’s the thing: I was a comedian who got a talk show, and I used to end my show every day by saying, ‘Let’s be kind to each other.’ Yeah, I know, it seemed like a good idea,” she said in the new hour, delivering the well-received punchline. “If I’d ended my show by saying, ‘Fuck you,’ people would have been pleasantly surprised to find out I’m a kind person.”
Like the show, the special begins by looking back on the story of 2020 (through a dramatic string of headlines) and the blow that hit DeGeneres’ career a few years ago when she came out as gay on the cover of Time magazine. DeGeneres then takes to the stage to share her own story. “I got kicked out of show business. Well, because I’m mean. You can’t be mean in show business. You get kicked out. There are no mean people in show business,” she jokes, adding that this is her second blow. “I got kicked out before. I got kicked out because I got kicked out. There are no gay people in show business. I get kicked out. There are no gay people in show business. And now I’m getting kicked out a third time because I’m old. That’s the triple crown of mean, old and gay.”
And there’s plenty of comedy to be had from there. “Money has never been an issue for me. It’s been an issue about healing wounds from my childhood. I thought if I could make people happy, they’d like me, and if they liked me, I’d be happy with myself,” she says once, then deadpans, “And all I can say about that is thank God for money.” Of course, DeGeneres touches on other topics, from chickens to parallel parking, but the bulk of the special focuses on the controversy and its aftermath.
The new hour-long show (actually an hour and 10 minutes long) is part of a lucrative two-special deal DeGeneres signed a few years ago. The first of that deal, 2018’s “Relatable,” was DeGeneres’ first special in 15 years. “For Your Approval” is produced by Ben Winston and his Fulwell 73 Productions, and features DeGeneres and her wife Portia de Rossi onstage at the end. It was directed by Joel Gallen, who also helmed Chris Rock’s 2023 special “Selective Outrage.”
As the special drew to a close, DeGeneres finally revealed she was happy — happy to no longer be a brand, a boss, a figurehead — and declared herself a strong woman amid deafening cheers and a standing ovation. She then sincerely thanked the audience for their love and support, and admitted she thought she’d never do stand-up comedy again because she didn’t think she’d find anything funny about what had happened. But being onstage again had been “therapeutic,” she concluded to thunderous applause, adding, “I’m so happy I was able to say goodbye on my own terms.”