Ellen DeGeneres’ ‘reign of terror’ mourned in brutal MTV Awards ‘in memoriam’ segment
Ellen Degeneres’ “reign of terror” was mourned at the MTV Movie & TV Awards. (Screenshot)
The MTV Movie & TV awards absolutely eviscerated Ellen DeGeneres by mourning the loss of her “reign of terror” in a brutal “in memoriam” segment.
The comedian announced last Wednesday (12 May) that her long-running talkshow will bow out at the end of its next season – and the MTV Movie & TV Awards wasn’t afraid to go for the jugular.
“I’d now like to take a sombre/awkward moment to acknowledge all that we’ve lost in the world of unscripted entertainment this year,” host Nikki Glaser said, kicking off a parody of an in-memoriam segment.
The spectacular montage featured “Giannina’s shoe” – referring to the moment Giannina Gibelli ran away from her own wedding on Love is Blind – while the segment also reflected on the days when Scott Disick still dated “age-appropriate women”.
But the MTV Movie & TV Awards left the best to last, ending with a black and white picture of Ellen DeGeneres along with the text: “Ellen’s reign of terror, 2003-2021.”
Ellen DeGeneres quit her talkshow following claims that she is ‘notoriously mean’
MTV’s first ever awards show to honour unscripted television firmly took aim at DeGeneres on Monday night (17 May) after her reputation took a battering last year.
DeGeneres was well known for her “be kind” message, but that veneer was stripped away when comedian Kevin T Porter started a viral Twitter thread in March 2020 describing her as “one of the meanest people alive”.
Later in 2020, former and current staff on The Ellen DeGeneres Show anonymously told Buzzfeed that the talkshow is plagued by racism, bullying and harassment.
Those allegations prompted Warner Brothers to launch an investigation, which led to the dismissal of bosses Ed Glavin, Kevin Leman and co-executive producer Jonathan Norman from the talkshow.
Many were unsurprised when DeGeneres revealed in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that her talkshow will come to an end at the end of its next season.
The once-revered talkshow host – whose ratings have been in free fall since the toxic workplace scandal hit – claimed she was leaving The Ellen DeGeneres Show behind because she no longer found it “challenging”.
DeGeneres insisted that the controversies of last year played no part in her decision to call it quits, but admitted that the scandal was “very hurtful”.
“If I was quitting the show because of that, I wouldn’t have come back this season,” DeGeneres said. “So it’s not why I’m stopping, but it was hard because I was sitting at home, it was summer, and I see a story that people have to chew gum before they talk to me and I’m like, ‘OK, this is hilarious.'”
She continued: “Then I see another story of some other ridiculous thing and then it just didn’t stop. And I wasn’t working, so I had no platform, and I didn’t want to address it on [Twitter] and I thought if I just don’t address it, it’s going to go away because it was all so stupid.”
