The life of Ellen Degeneres.

Brut America

For 19 seasons, "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," made her everyone's favorite comedian ... until it was caught in controversy.  This is the life of Ellen Degeneres.

Transcript

00:00I tear everything I say apart. Everything I do, I just, I analyze and my mind kind of holds on to

00:07oh I said this or did this or um so but then there's a part of me that you know

00:13was pretty okay and confident.

00:30For me to read in the press about a toxic work environment.

00:52I didn't want to tell my mother because I was protecting her and I knew that that would ruin

00:57her happiness.

01:09My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was 60.

01:12She's 97 today and we don't know where the hell she is.

01:15Susan, I'm gay.

01:37When everything came crashing to a halt three months or so after she came out,

01:42um it was just a very clear, very strong message sent by the TV industry that

01:49it wasn't going to tolerate gay people.

02:06I was on the road doing stand-up trying to have a career again because I had lost my sitcom and

02:11I had nothing going on and he called me and said I wrote this thing, I have you in mind and

02:16you ramble and that's what you do in your work and so you know I just got really lucky.

02:32You got a problem buddy? Huh? Huh? Do you? Do you? Do you?

02:35This is our very, very first show and you are my very first audience.

02:52I think that my entire career has been an adventure and it's a ride that

02:58I never could have predicted, I never would have expected it to go in the places that it's gone.

03:06It's easy to forget now just how much courage was required for Ellen to come out on the most

03:25public of stages almost 20 years ago. Just how important it was not just to the LGBT community

03:33but for all of us to see somebody so full of kindness and light, somebody we liked so much,

03:39somebody who could be our neighbor or our colleague or our sister challenge our own assumptions.

04:03It did feel very misogynistic. I'd never had any complaints about anything for 17 years.

04:33Today I am announcing that next season, season 19, is going to be my last season.

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