Ellen DeGeneres’s “kicked out” line comes from her 2024 Netflix stand-up special, Ellen DeGeneres: For Your Approval. She uses it as comic shorthand for the career and public-image fallout after allegations about the workplace culture on her daytime show, comparing that episode with the backlash she faced in the 1990s after coming out as lesbian. It was not a literal expulsion from Hollywood.
What did Ellen DeGeneres say?
In For Your Approval, DeGeneres tells the audience: “For those keeping score, this is the second time I was kicked out of show business.” Netflix Tudum quoted that line in its September 24, 2024 recap. She presents the phrase as a joke about two periods of public and professional backlash, not as a claim that an industry body formally barred her from working.
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Netflix classifies Ellen DeGeneres: For Your Approval as a stand-up comedy title and assigns it to 2024. Tudum says it premiered globally on September 24, 2024. That describes its release date, not necessarily its current availability in every country.
Which two episodes is the joke comparing?
The 1990s: backlash after coming out
DeGeneres links the joke to the response after she came out as lesbian in the 1990s, both as a person and through her sitcom character. The Washington Post’s September 24, 2024 report describes the special’s comparison between that earlier backlash and the later workplace controversy.
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- Ellen Here and now
2020: allegations about the daytime show’s workplace
In 2020, staffers made allegations concerning workplace culture at The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Netflix’s career retrospective records DeGeneres’s apology to staff. The allegations and the comedian’s later account are distinct: the joke is her framing of the fallout, not an independent adjudication of every workplace claim. The Atlantic’s review of the special places the show’s ending in the longer aftermath of the reports.
Did the talk show end right after the allegations?
No. The Ellen DeGeneres Show began on September 8, 2003, and its final episode aired on May 26, 2022. Netflix Tudum’s retrospective says it ran for 19 seasons and won 64 Daytime Emmy Awards, including 12 in the Outstanding Entertainment Talk Show category; the page does not state a publication year for those career figures. The Atlantic notes that the show continued for 20 months after the reports first surfaced before ending after 19 seasons.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Was the joke first performed at the Netflix taping?
No. There were two separate events. DeGeneres used the joke during an April 2024 performance at Largo in West Hollywood on her Ellen’s Last Stand…Up Tour. The Netflix special was filmed later, at Minneapolis’s Orpheum Theatre in August 2024. The Washington Post reports on the earlier Largo set, while the Los Angeles Times review of the Netflix special identifies the Minneapolis taping. The April performance was not where the Netflix special was filmed.
What “kicked out” means here
The phrase captures DeGeneres’s humorous comparison of two public controversies and their effects on her career and image. The available reporting does not establish that she was literally expelled from Hollywood, and no relevant statistic measures such an expulsion. Her 2022 talk-show finale also came after a long intervening period, rather than immediately after the 2020 allegations.
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