Current and Former ‘Ellen Show’ Employees Underwhelmed With Ellen’s Apology on the Season Premiere

Ellen DeGeneres’s talk show is back. The premiere of the new season aired on Monday September 21st, and Ellen did not shy away from talking about the accusations that the work environment on her show is toxic.

Ellen used sarcastic humor mixed in with serious talk during her opening monologue to mention how her summer has been anything but fantastic and how the show is committed to making and implementing changes.

Well the studio audience laughed and applauded, current and former employees were not as excited about her speech. Some feel that she make the speech just to help her ratings, and others felt that it was incredibly insensitive to make the trauma endured by employees into a punch line for the sake of a laugh.

One former employee said, “When she said, ‘Oh, my summer was great’ and that was supposed to be funny I thought, ‘It’s funny that you had a rough summer because everyone was calling out all of the allegations of your toxic work environment and now you’re the one suffering?’” 

Another former employee said, “Not only did Ellen turn my trauma, turn our traumas, into a joke, she somehow managed to make this about her.”

A current employee of Ellen’s show told BuzzFeed News, “The average person will listen to it and make their own choices, but what people don’t always take into account is that information is power, and she’s sharing it now because it’s for premiere week and it’s to get viewers back, and that just feels the opposite of what this message is about.”

Watch the video below for more details about the employees’ reactions to Ellen’s on-air apology.

Do you think is was inappropriate of Ellen to joke about the toxic work environment on the season premiere of her show?