Former Employees Say Ellen’s “Be Kind” Talk Show Mantra Masks A Toxic Work Culture
“If [Ellen] wants to have her own show and have her name on the show title, she needs to be more involved to see what's going on,” one former employee said.
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One black staffer's experience:Ellen DeGeneres has built her worldwide, multimillion-dollar brand on the motto "be kind," with lavish giveaways and acts of charity. But behind the scenes, current and former employees on her leading daytime show say they faced racism, fear, and intimidation.
"That 'be kind' bullshit only happens when the cameras are on. It's all for show," one former employee told BuzzFeed News. "I know they give money to people and help them out, but it's for show."
BuzzFeed News spoke to one current and 10 former employees on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, all of whom asked to remain anonymous, fearing retribution from the award-winning NBC daytime talk show and others in the entertainment industry. They said they were fired after taking medical leave or bereavement days to attend family funerals. One employee, who claims she was fed up with comments about her race, essentially walked off the job. Others said they were also instructed by their direct managers to not speak to DeGeneres if they saw her around the office.
Most of the former employees blamed executive producers and other senior managers for the day-to-day toxicity, but one former employee said that, ultimately, it's Ellen's name on the show and "she really needs to take more responsibility" for the workplace environment.
On mental health:A Black woman who used to work on The Ellen DeGeneres Show told BuzzFeed News she experienced racist comments, actions, and "microaggressions" during her year and a half as an employee. She said when she was hired, a senior-level producer told her and another Black employee, "Oh wow, you both have box braids; I hope we don't get you confused." And at a work party, she said, one of the main writers told her, "I'm sorry, I only know the names of the white people who work here," and other coworkers "awkwardly laughed it off" instead of coming to her defense.
When the former employee brought up issues of race and representation on the show and asked producers not to use offensive terms like "spirit animal" in segments, her colleagues called her "the PC police."
When she started to speak up about the discrimination, she said, all of her colleagues distanced themselves from her.
"Whenever I brought up an issue to my white male boss, he would bring up some random story about some random Black friend that he had and how they managed to get over stuff," she said. "He would use his Black friend as some way to say, 'I understand your struggle.' But it was all performative bullshit."
After one year at Ellen, she said she asked for a raise after learning another recent hire made double for doing the same job, despite her having worked in the television industry for a decade. Her manager told her "they'd see what they could do," but months went by and nothing happened, she said.
After working on The Ellen DeGeneres Show for nearly a year, one former employee said they took medical leave for one month to check into a mental health facility for a suicide attempt. But the week they returned to work, they were told their position was being eliminated.
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Another former employee said they were fired after an unexpectedly difficult year that required them to take time away from the job on three occasions: medical leave for three weeks after they were in a car accident, working remotely for two days to attend a family member's funeral, and then three days off to travel for another family member's funeral. Each request was a battle with supervisors and HR, they added.
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A third former employee said they were given a warning for creating a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for medical costs that weren't covered by their company health insurance and then sharing it on social media.
Just 24 hours after posting the GoFundMe, they said, they were called into the department head's office and told to take it down because of concerns it might hurt DeGeneres's image.
TL;DR: 10 staffers are speaking out about how terrible the work environment at Ellen is.The employees who spoke to BuzzFeed News said they worked in a culture dominated by fear. One of them said a general feeling among staffers was "if you have an issue, don't even think about bringing it up."
"I never felt like it was safe to go to my manager when I had issues — because this was the same person who would wait for me to go to the bathroom and then message me, asking me where I was and why I wasn't at my desk," one employee said.
"People focus on rumors about how Ellen is mean and everything like that, but that's not the problem. The issue is these three executive producers running the show who are in charge of all these people [and] who make the culture and are putting out this feeling of bullying and being mean," another former employee claimed. "They feel that everybody who works at The Ellen Show is lucky to work there — 'So if you have a problem, you should leave because we'll hire someone else because everybody wants to work here.'"
