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During one appearance, he recalled a producer urgently warning him: “You’re not going to talk about meat or beef or anything like that, right?”
The oddity wasn’t the request itself—Ellen was a known vegan—it was the fear dripping from the producer’s voice.
“I was like, ‘Oh, this guy’s scared to death. This guy’s scared,’” Carolla recounted.
Then, like clockwork, the same producer came back 20 minutes later with the exact same warning: “OK, but don’t talk about beef or meat or any[thing].”
Carolla had been on dozens of late-night shows. None, he says, had the fear factor Ellen’s did.
“When you enter a show, could be the Jay Leno show, Jimmy Kimmel or David Letterman, there is a vibe like there is in every workplace,” he said on Fox Business back in 2021. “Ellen’s show, people were scared — real scared.”
A Smiling Tyrant?
Ellen, according to Carolla, didn’t have to lash out at guests. Her staff’s behavior did all the talking.
“She’s not a nice person at all,” he declared. “Everyone was scared of her, which means she’s mean. She’s not gonna be mean to me — I’m a guest on the show, right? I wouldn’t know it from my exchanges, I would know it from how her staff was cowering.”
Carolla’s glimpse behind the curtain became all the more damning when he spoke with a former Ellen staff writer.
“I talked to someone who signed an NDA, so I won’t say his name, but he wrote for Ellen,” Carolla revealed. “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.’”
Even Rosie O’Donnell, who has a reputation for being difficult, didn’t earn that title. Ellen did.
That kind of confession—coming from someone legally bound to silence—paints a picture far more troubling than Ellen’s curated public charm.
The Fall of a TV Empire
In 2020, Carolla’s private suspicions burst into the public square.
BuzzFeed News broke a bombshell exposé detailing horrifying allegations of racism, fear, and abuse on Ellen’s set. Former employees spoke of a culture of silence and survival, where smiling was mandatory but morale was nonexistent.
Despite public apologies and executive shakeups, the writing was on the wall. The show ended in 2022 after nearly two decades.
Ellen addressed the scandal in her Netflix special For Your Approval, claiming, “So, the thought of anyone thinking that I’m mean was devastating to me, and it consumed me for a long time.”
But no amount of spin could save the shattered “be kind” brand. The audience had moved on—and so did Ellen.
Retreating Abroad After Trump’s Return
After the downfall of her empire, Ellen and wife Portia de Rossi quietly relocated to a countryside farm in the U.K.
They arrived just before the 2024 U.S. election and, after waking to crying emojis from friends, Ellen decided she was done with America.
“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,’” she told British broadcaster Richard Bacon. “And we’re like, ‘We’re staying here.’”
Final Curtain Call
Ellen’s rapid fall from national sweetheart to self-exiled celebrity serves as a warning to Hollywood elites: image isn’t everything.
Adam Carolla, for his part, saw the cracks long before the public caught on. While viewers danced along to her monologues, her staff, according to Carolla, cowered under the pressure of a tyrannical boss.
In the end, Ellen didn’t just lose a show—she lost a legacy. And no amount of farmland in the Cotswolds can erase the stories now told out loud.
As Carolla made clear: sometimes the nicest brand hides the darkest truth.
