Abuse, depression, and death: the dark side of Ellen DeGeneres’ life

Smiles, energy, quirky dances, and humor. That’s all hundreds of audiences expecting millions on the other side of TV when Eileen sits on the sofa to attend her show. Behind the contractually required joy, there is a cloud hovering and it has been revealed in recent months. After all, many of those who work daily with celebrities say, Ellen doesn’t always burst out with friendly smiles. They say there is a toxic environment behind the scenes. And, as behind the scenes, the presenter’s life is far from a story full of happy endings.

This Wednesday, May 12, Eileen announced that after nearly two decades of airing, her show would be ending. In an interview with “The Hollywood ReporterEileen revealed that she informed her team of the decision this Tuesday, May 11, and that she will explain all the outlines in a conversation with Oprah Winfrey, on her show, this Thursday, the 13th.

Thus the next season of the daily talk show, the 19th, will be the final season. The program ends in a black cloud, which will be another negative sign in your professional and personal path.

The actress’s darker days were kept secret until 2005, when she decided to approach the topic for the first time during an interview with. “Lure”. In an interview with American magazine, she recalled how her stepfather had sexually assaulted her, forcing her to try to escape from the house multiple times. On one of those occasions, she was even forced to “break the window and jump”. He ended up spending the night in the hospital.

The stepfather’s attack began when Ellen was 15 years old. At that time, the mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and spent a lot of time away from home to receive treatment. It was the perfect opportunity to be mistreated.

“He told me I felt chatting in my breasts and that I should feel,” he remembers at the time and recently in Interview To David Letterman, on the Netflix special “The Next Guest No Presentations Needed”.

“I knew nothing about the corpses, I didn’t know the breasts were so different. Anyway, he convinced me that he should touch them and then he did it over and over again, and on another occasion he tried to break into my bedroom door. I ran out of the window because I knew he was going to try something What, “he says.

Faced with illness, DeGeneres chose not to tell his mother what had happened. “I should never have protected you. I should have protected myself and only told him everything after a few years. You did not believe me and stayed with him for another 18 years,” says the 61-year-old presenter.

Only nearly two decades later, Mother Betty realized that her husband had insisted on telling the story differently. Last year he decided to make a public apology to his daughter.

“I know now that one of the most difficult things to do is admit that someone has been sexually abused. I love my daughter and wish I had the ability to listen to her when she tells me everything,” adding that he will have to “live with regret.”

Betty DeGeneres did not believe her daughter’s confession

The presenter explains, public recognition arises “because it is important for girls who walk around to know that there are different ways of saying no,” and that “if this happens, it is imperative that you tell someone right away.” “I want them not to let anyone do what they did to me,” he concluded.

“You are very weak at this age, you trust people. And when that trust is violated, you do not know what to do and you do not want to say anything because you think:“ How did this happen and how could I be so stupid? ”He remembers in 2018 all these things Which you thought you could control and ultimately, you couldn’t control it.

The story was published in 2005, although Eileen had already revealed it in the Inner Circle, which over and over again ended in the conclusion: “Ah, that’s why you’re a lesbian.” The presenter just shook her head. “I was a lesbian much before that. My earliest memories are related to exactly that.”

In the 2018 confession, Eileen also approached the topic in a more rigorous way, especially given the social and political context the United States has experienced.

“As a victim of sexual assault, I get angry at people who do not believe and still ask, ‘How can you not remember the exact day that happened? “You don’t remember these things. What you remember is what happened to you, where you were and how you felt. This is what you remember,” he explained during Interview Savannah Guthrie.

The shock of death

Exiting the treasury brought him more problems. Her father Elliot kicked her out of the house when Ellen got out of homosexuality. “[A minha madrasta] I had two young daughters and was worried that I could influence them, ”he revealed in an interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Fighting for a career in comedy and making amateur circles, he ended up meeting one of his first true girlfriends, poet and bar manager in New Orleans, Cat Berkoff.

The love story was short-lived. Tragically, Kate died in a car accident after concert as she was arguing with Eileen, who was 21 years old. “My life changed (…) because I had the accident, it just happened, but I didn’t know it was her because I had a different car. I found out later that it was her,” he admitted in one of his shows.

Eileen began her career as a comedian.

The trauma left deep scars on the presenter, as well as a strong sense of guilt. “My brother’s group was performing and Kate and I were done – we were arguing a lot. She was trying to convince me to go home and pretended I couldn’t hear it because the music was so loud. I planned to come back, but I was trying to teach him a lesson.” remember.

On the way back, he even saw the car broken in half, with ambulances still close by. The sirens approached from behind and decided to head home without stopping. That was when he realized who was in that car. “He made me feel that I should have come home with her that night, not be with someone else, and that she should have stopped the car. All this stuff. I felt a lot of guilt.”

depression

“Yes, I’m Gay”, revealed the title of the cover piece for “Time” in April 1997. Ellen DeGeneres was rocking American society, at a time when the assumption that homosexuality in public places was a real media event.

A few days after the magazine was published, he revealed, “I decided that I did not want to live the rest of my life ashamed of this.” The exit from the closet turned from real life to fiction. The character of that which was the first and most important victory of her career – the release of the sitcom “Eileen”, in which she was the protagonist – also assumed her perversion.

Ellen was the first openly gay woman to play a gay character. There were many early adopters of an American community still trying to deal with this phenomenon.

A year later, the show was canceled and Eileen’s life plunged into a depressive spiral, largely due to reactions to the revelation. “Because there was so much talk about it, almost everyone was satiated. I made the cover of” Time, “a prime-time special with Diane Sawyer and Oprah. Even Elton John said, ‘Shut up though. You’re gay, we already know.’ Now. Be funny.I have never met him in person and thought, “What kind of support does a gay man come from?” Podcast Dax Shepherd.

Layer moved to Ellen’s life

Without an agent and a job, DeGeneres felt that he had lost his career path. “It was seen as a failure in the industry. Nobody touched me. He revealed.

Homosexuality became the subject of monologues by other comedians on national shows, and others offered more insidious considerations, but for Ellen, all the comments were similar to the attacks.

“If you ever feel depressed, you know that we tend to isolate ourselves and not seek help. We don’t say,“ I’m suffering, I need help. ”We crawled to the bottom of the black hole and this is where I stayed for the long haul,” he admitted.

In the end, the presenter began to feel more comfortable, not least because getting out of the closet was a moment of “total sincerity” with herself: “It gave me confidence, something that helps me during depression, which tends to destroy confidence and you end up lost in it. Forget that you are totally enough. As you “.

A good dose of antidepressant and many hours of treatment were essential for DeGeneres to get out of that hole. I couldn’t believe it even when I was able to return from that country. I can’t believe how far life has taken me today. “