Over the years, there have been many claims made about Ellen DeGeneres being mean and the work environment at The Ellen DeGeneres Show being toxic. Now, Adam Carolla has opened up about his experience being a guest on her show, and he explained why he believes “people were scared” of her.
As DeGeneres makes headlines over her move to the UK and political comments, Adam Carolla was asked on After Party with Emily Jashinsky if he thinks she’s one of the people who have unraveled because of Donald Trump. In response, he said, “Ellen has always been a mean person.” He also compared the energy of her show behind the scenes to other talk shows, like Jay Leno’s and Jimmy Kimmel’s. While he said Kimmel and Leno were “laid back,” he believes DeGeneres made people “scared.” As he said:
Ellen’s show, people were scared — real scared.
He then went on to tell a story about a time he was a guest on the show. Carolla explained that a segment producer came into his dressing room to discuss the topics he’d talk about on air. He noted that they’d discuss things like “Christmas,” and then he clarified with the comedian that he wouldn’t bring up “beef or meet.” Carolla confirmed he would not, but the producer returned later to ask again, as he explained:
He goes ‘You’re not going to talk about meat or beef or anything like that right?’ And I go, ‘No, I’m not. I’m just going to talk about the stuff we talked about, going on vacation, Christmas with the kids, you know, their anecdotes.’ He goes ‘Oh, OK, alright, OK, alright.’ And he came back like 20 minutes later, right before I went out [and said] ‘OK, don’t talk about beef or meat or anything.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, this guy is scared to death.’ This guy’s scared.
After that, Adam Carolla doubled down on his opinion, saying he spoke to another employee about their experience working on DeGeneres’ show. Without saying their name, he recalled that he was told they thought she was the “worst person” they’d ever met:
Later on, I talked to someone who signed an NDA, so I won’t say his name, but he wrote for Ellen. I just went, ‘How’s Ellen?’ And he said, ‘Worst person, uh, worst person — not worst person I’ve worked for, worst person I’ve ever met.'
Adam Carolla then said that DeGeneres was never directly mean to him. He came to the opinion that she was mean, because the people who worked for her that he interacted with were scared of their boss.
Of course, this is simply his opinion. However, he is by no means the first person to claim the former talk show host was “mean.” Margaret Cho recently said Ellen was “weird and not nice” to her. Back in 2020, Ryan Phillippe threw some shade at her by pausing over her “be kind to one another” line. Meanwhile, former Bachelorette star Ali Fedotowsky-Manno said the host laughed at her instead of with her.
For the last five years, the discourse surrounding Ellen DeGeneres, her work and her show has been turbulent. Now that she’s back in the news, it’s bubbling back up again. So, as we learn more about what she’s up to and the ever-evolving discussion about her old show, we’ll be sure to keep you posted.
