Ellen DeGeneres is returning to stand-up comedy after 15 years in her new Netflix special,
Relatable, which premieres later this month. The trailer touches on her experience coming out, among other things.
When she came out in 1997, and her character Ellen Morgan followed suit, she became the first openly gay lead in television history.
44 million people watched her coming out episode, which went on to win an Emmy. However, the show also received death threats and was cancelled due to falling ratings; Ellen struggled to find other work until her talk show launched five years later.
This echoes her conversation earlier this year on Jerry Seinfeld's
Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, where she talked about:
- Being unemployable (and angry) for 3 years after Ellen was cancelled
- Touring for 90% gay audiences during those years, and being viewed as a spokesperson for the community
- The death of her girlfriend when she was 20 years old
- The world today being “such a scary place right now, in so many ways" that it “overwhelms me with dread”
The Ellen DeGeneres Show has been running since 2003, Ellen celebrated her 10-year anniversary with wife Portia de Rossi in August, and the couple is worth $380 million.
SOURCE, Google & Netflix