Ellen DeGeneres talk show guest claims her staff was ‘scared to death,’ found them ‘cowering’ in fear of the ‘mean’ host

The catty side of talk shows keeps revealing itself. This time, more information about how Ellen DeGeneres ran her eponymous daytime talk show has emerged, and some of her former employees even regard her as the worst person they’ve ever met in their lives.

Pandemic aside, 2022 was a simpler time — where if someone lost their talk show, it was because of something as innocuous as being mean, as opposed to now, where it could be because of a complex conspiracy that involves the president. But when people started actually getting into the weeds of the “meanness” behind the scenes at The Ellen DeGeneres Show, it became clear that it wasn’t just a case of an unfriendly boss — this was intense bullying.

The news of DeGeneres’ toxic set first hit BuzzFeed. According to the publication, the star — who was then known for her “kindness” by the public due to her massive giveaways — was overseeing an office culture that condoned sexual harassment and racial microaggressions. But the actual direct allegations against Ellen herself were quite few.

DeGeneres even used that fact to try and thread a comeback into show business after her show got unceremoniously canceled. Page Six reports that during her Netflix special in the aftermath of her show’s cancellation, she said, “I’ve spent an entire lifetime trying to make people happy and I’ve cared far too much what other people think of me. So, the thought of anyone thinking that I’m mean was devastating to me, and it consumed me for a long time. After a lifetime of caring, I just can’t anymore. So I don’t.”

But now, more information on her own actions is coming out years later through a former guest on her show, Adam Carolla. The comedian is best known for his appearance on The Man Show alongside Jimmy Kimmel in the early 2000s, whose show he’s also gone on and called “laid-back and nice.”

According to the comedian, the same cannot be said about his experience at DeGeneres’ set. He was on After Party with Emily Jashinsky, where he relayed his awkward experience on the show. Apparently, even before he was on air, a segment producer came to his changing room to ensure that he wouldn’t talk about meat in any context because Ellen was a vegetarian at the time — and Carolla could immediately recognize that the producer was “scared to death.”

Carolla didn’t just reserve his ire for DeGeneres, however. He claimed that David Letterman and Rosie O’Donnell also have a reputation for being difficult to work with, but there’s nobody who quite inspired stories like DeGeneres. Apparently, a writer who worked for her told Carolla — when he asked how it was working for Ellen — that she’s not the just worst person he’s ever worked for… she’s the worst person he’s ever met.

Right now, Ellen DeGeneres has moved away from the U.S. and lives in the U.K., as far as possible from Donald Trump. There, she believes that she can find peace and reconnect with simpler aspects of life like farming and living with animals. Hopefully, she’s kinder to the animals.

She was reached for comment but didn’t respond to these latest allegations of her conduct at her former show.