Ellen DeGeneres Departs Daytime TV: “When We Started This Show, I Couldn’t Say ‘Gay’”
glamour.comEllen launched in September 2003. “Twenty years ago when we were trying to sell the show, no one thought that this would work.
Not because it was a different kind of show, but because I was different,” DeGeneres said. “When we started the show, I couldn’t say ‘gay.’ I was not allowed to say ‘gay.’ I say it at home a lot—you know, ‘What are we having for our gay breakfast?’ or ‘Pass the gay salt,’ ‘Has anyone seen the gay remote?’—but we couldn’t say ‘gay.’ I couldn’t say ‘we,’ because that would imply that I was with someone.
Sure couldn’t say ‘wife,’ and that’s because it wasn’t legal for gay people to get married.” “Now I say ‘wife’ all the time,” she continued, as the camera showed her spouse of nearly 15 years, Portia de Rossi.“Twenty five years ago they canceled my sitcom because they didn’t want a lesbian to be in prime time once a week,” DeGeneres recalled. “So I said ‘Okay, I’ll be in daytime every day.
How ’bout that?’” She then joined her longtime DJ, tWitch, a.k.a. Stephen Boss, for one last dance to “Best of My Love.”A trio of performers joined DeGeneres for her final episode, which was .
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