Ellen DeGeneres

Jennifer Aniston, Billie Eilish, and Pink stopped by for the final episode of 'Ellen' after nearly 20 years.

“I did a movie called The Break-Up. I just kind of leaned into the end.” Billie Eilish acknowledged the show was a regular presence in her household. “You started this show the year after I was born,” she said. “And if someone is brave enough to tell you who they are, be brave enough to support them, even if you don’t understand. “When we started the show, I couldn’t say ‘gay.’ I was not allowed to say ‘gay.’ I say it at home a lot—you know, ‘What are we having for our gay breakfast?’ or ‘Pass the gay salt,’ ‘Has anyone seen the gay remote?’—but we couldn’t say ‘gay.’ I couldn’t say ‘we,’ because that would imply that I was with someone. “You can see other talk shows now, and I may see another audience once in a while.” Not because it was a different kind of show, but because I was different,” DeGeneres said.

Jennifer Aniston, Pink and Billie Eilish were the final guests on 'The Ellen DeGeneres Show,' which ended Thursday after 19 seasons.

I feel the love, and I send it back to you.” “I couldn’t say ‘we’ because that implied that I was with someone. “When we started the show, I couldn’t say ‘gay’ on the show,” DeGeneres said.

Today is Ellen's last show, which means her last monologue. The show shared a sneak peek into what the final episode will look like!

After 19 seasons and 64 daytime Emmy awards, “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” is saying goodbye.

A few years later, she started “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” But DeGeneres said the drama isn’t why she’s ending the show, calling her staff her “family and best friends.” DeGeneres said, “As great as this show is, and as fun as it is, it’s just not a challenge anymore.”

LEILA FADEL, HOST: Ellen DeGeneres's talk show will end its run today after 19 years and more than 3,000 episodes. NPR TV critic Eric Deggans says DeGeneres ...

The backlash was tough. DEGGANS: That's DeGeneres speaking at Tulane University's 2009 commencement about the coming out episode. I mean, why can't I just say the truth, I mean, be who I am? DeGeneres' show emphasized the phrase be kind to one another, saying it at the end of episodes, creating a line of merchandise with the slogan, featuring charity drives and giveaways, and developing a subscription box filled with items she selected called the Be Kind box. ELLEN DEGENERES: I learned that things happened here that never should have happened. Still, there is a dark cloud over the show's approaching end, namely allegations published by BuzzFeed in the summer of 2020, featuring former employees saying the show was a toxic workplace, culminating in the departure of three top executives and an on-air apology from DeGeneres herself.

The guest list for the final show included Billie Eilish, Pink and Jennifer Aniston, making her 20th appearance – a run that dates back to the syndicated ...

For most of its 19 seasons the Ellen DeGeneres Show is where A-listers that were game for pranks and fun new products looking for placement would find a home. In her 2018 Netflix comedy special, Relatable, DeGeneres showed she still has her standup chops, as well as good inroads with the streaming giant. She also showed her edgier side, that’s been mostly off our screens since the 80s, with jokes about her cosseting wealth and frustration at having to dance for fans. But none of that stopped her from bringing Winfrey, Michelle Obama and Kim Kardashian out as guests in her final few months. But then two years later she resurfaced with the Warner Bros-produced Ellen DeGeneres Show, a daytime chatshowthat launched at a time when Sharon Osborn and Rita Rudner were vying to become the next Winfrey. DeGeneres, an out gay woman, hardly looked the favorite. In 1998, a year after DeGeneres came out, Ellen was cancelled – a decision, she said, that caught her blindsided. In 2007, a former writer’s assistant accused her of treating writers on the Ellen Show “ like shit,” a theme that would revisit her in the end. The episode was celebrated in the LBGTQ+ community, but was also the focus of immense backlash. It was a risky move that took the brilliant comedian, whose soaring career stalled after she came out as gay, and remade her as the undisputed queen of daytime TV. But the show was dogged by scandal in recent seasons, as former employees accused her of presiding over a toxic workplace. In 1997, at the height of her pre-daytime popularity, DeGeneres came out as a lesbian to Time magazine and on the Oprah Winfrey Show; then on DeGeneres’s own sitcom, her character came out – to a therapist played by Winfrey, and to a love interest played by Laura Dern. And the jokes were often at her expense. It also saw DeGeneres’s brother, Vance, and her wife, Portia de Rossi, well with emotion as the audience gave the 64-year-old host one last standing ovation.