Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres has been secretly plotting a television comeback from her U.K. hideaway — but the National Enquirer can reveal fresh bullying claims have landed her back at square one.
“The whole point of Ellen going to the U.K. was to let the dust settle on the bullying scandal. Her goal has always been to make a comeback. She’s just been waiting for enough time to pass,” says a insider.
The 67-year-old comedian quit her long-running daytime show in 2022 after staffers blasted her as a behind-the-scenes meanie. After hotly denying any wrongdoing, the host fled to England in November 2024 along with wife Portia de Rossi, 52.
“They’ve been making a big show of how much they love life in the Cotswolds, but it’s an open secret that Ellen is champing at the bit to get her career back on track,” says the source.
“She’s been hitting up her contacts and feeling quietly confident, especially with all the talk about Kelly Clarkson stepping down from her daytime show to focus on her music career.”
But according to our source, her comeback hopes are cratering over new accusations from a cameraman, who claims to have worked on her show for a decade. In a recent interview, he claimed Ellen banned Gordon Ramsay after the celebrity chef called her cooking “rubbish,” and disliked male staff speaking to her wife, per Daily Mail. According to the former staffer, Ellen turned cold with men “if they were ever caught in conversation with Portia.”
The staffer revealed: “It was just weird. Cameras on, she’d be dancing, doing all this fun stuff, and cameras off, she was terrifying.”
The source adds: “This has ignited the whole scandal again and it’s hit Ellen like a ton of bricks. She’s smart enough to know it’s a huge turnoff for anyone wanting to hire her. Ellen’s now facing the harsh reality that she’s never going to rebuild her reputation. Someone always seems to come crawling out the woodwork to dredge up the past.
“It’s put her in a foul mood and as usual poor Portia is bearing the brunt of it.”