Ellen DeGeneres on talk show ending after 19 seasons: ‘I was crying every day’

foxnews.com:

Ellen DeGeneres is reflecting on her run as a daytime talk show host ahead of her final sign-off. The "Ellen DeGeneres Show" has appeared on television sets for 19 seasons and more than 3,200 episodes.

Now, the comedian is officially saying goodbye after nearly 20 years on-air when her final episode airs on Thursday. DeGeneres announced the end of her show in 2021 after a year of brutal headlines involving a toxic workplace scandal.

In a new interview, DeGeneres, 64, said she isn’t feeling as emotional about the finality of her situation as she once did months ago when she was still taping episodes into late April, telling The Hollywood Reporter that since she knew a season out her curtain call would be coming, she did her best to "take it all in" as the days dwindled. "It’s funny because the last couple of months I was more emotional than I was in the last week or two," DeGeneres told the publication. "I got really emotional about two months out, but that last week I wasn’t because I really just wanted to enjoy it.

I was working with [former monk] Jay Shetty a lot, too, on being present and I was. I was very present for all of it." In fact, the "Relatable" performer pressed that it was the emotion from the parade of guests making their final appearances on the show that surprised her, describing the feeling as "flattering" given that they had "really enjoyed themselves on my show." "For people like Zac Efron to get emotional — I mean, he really teared up, but there are so many people who grew up on the show and so that [response] was very flattering," she explained.