Ellen DeGeneres has said that she moved to the UK with her wife Portia de Rossi because of Donald Trump’s election victory.
The former talk show host, 67, travelled to the Cotswolds with de Rossi in November last year, shortly before Trump was elected as US president for a second term.
During a live conversation with broadcaster Richard Bacon in Cheltenham on Sunday, DeGeneres replied in the affirmative when asked if she moved to the UK because of America’s choice of leader.
“Yes. We got here the day before the election and woke up to lots of texts from our friends with crying emojis, and I was like, ‘He got in.’ And we’re like, ‘We’re staying here,’” she said, according to The Guardian.
After her long-running talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show ended in 2022 following allegations of a toxic workplace environment, DeGeneres went on a final comedy tour around the US, which ended in August that year. Shortly after that the couple bought what DeGeneres described as a “part-time house” in the Cotswolds where they intended to spend around four months a year.
After Trump’s re-election, however, that plan turned permanent.
DeGeneres said the house itself is “absolutely beautiful,” adding that they saw snow there this winter for the first time since her move.
“We’re just not used to seeing this kind of beauty. The villages and the towns and the architecture – everything you see is charming and it’s just a simpler way of life. It’s clean. Everything here is just better – the way animals are treated, people are polite. I just love it here,” she said.
She added that she and de Rossi may get married again in England.
“The Baptist Church in America is trying to reverse gay marriage,” she said. “They’re trying to literally stop it from happening in the future and possibly reverse it,” referring to a June vote by southern Baptists to endorse a ban on gay marriage.
“Portia and I are already looking into it, and if they do that, we’re going to get married here.”
“I wish we were at a place where it was not scary for people to be who they are. I wish that we lived in a society where everybody could accept other people and their differences. So until we’re there, I think there’s a hard place to say we have huge progress.”
She also addressed the allegations that the environment on her talk show was toxic, saying: “No matter what, any article that came up, it was like, ‘She’s mean,’ and it’s like, how do I deal with this without sounding like a victim or ‘poor me’ or complaining?
“It’s as simple as, I’m a direct person, and I’m very blunt, and I guess sometimes that means that... I'm mean?”
Over the weekend, DeGeneres took to Instagram to show her support for Rosie O’Donnell, after Trump claimed O’Donnell was “a Threat to Humanity,” and he was giving “serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.”
“Good for you @rosie,” DeGeneres wrote in the caption of her post.
O’Donnell, who moved to Ireland earlier this year, fired back at Trump, calling him “King Joffrey with a tangerine spray tan,” a reference to a much-hated, sadistic and authoritarian character from Game of Thrones.
In a TikTok video shared in March, O’Donnell hinted that she chose to move because Trump became president for a second term.
“I miss many things about life there at home and I'm trying to find a home here in this beautiful country and when it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America, that's when we will consider coming back,” the Now & Then star had said at the time.
Referring to America under Trump, she added: “It's been heartbreaking to see what's happening politically and hard for me personally as well.”
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