Back in November, we reported that the comedian Ellen DeGeneres had fled America and moved across the world to the United Kingdom. Since then, DeGeneres has been laying low in her new home with her actress wife Portia de Rossi of Arrested Development fame.
Unfortunately for DeGeneres, however, her controversial past in America has just come back to haunt her.
DeGeneres Slammed By Sopranos Star
Steve Schirripa is best known for playing Bobby Bacala on the iconic television show The Sopranos. Prior to that, he worked as the entertainment director of The Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. There, he got to rub elbows with tons of famous comedians who performed at this venue. These comedians included Drew Carey, Kevin Pollack, Damon Wayans, and many more.
All these years later, however, there’s one comedian from his days at The Riviera Hotel that still stands out in Schirripa’s mind as his least favorite.
“I don’t like Ellen DeGeneres,” Schirripa said while appearing on the We Might Be Drunk podcast. “She was an [expletive] then.”
“She got proven to be an [expletive], but she was an [expletive] way back when,” he added.
DeGeneres ‘Wasn’t A Nice Person
Schirripa was undoubtedly referring to the toxic workplace scandal that destroyed DeGeneres’ image in the U.S. For decades, DeGeneres was known as “The Queen of Nice.” She even ended every episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show by telling her viewers to “be kind to one another.”
That all changed in 2020, when DeGeneres was accused of presiding over a workplace at her talk show that was full of racism, sexism, and bullying. It was even alleged that her own staffers were told to never make eye contact with DeGeneres.
“The whole show was an act,” Schirripa said of her talk show. “I mean, she wasn’t a nice person.”
DeGeneres Fled America To Escape ‘Hate’ Towards Her
The Ellen DeGeneres Show went off the air in 2022. In the years since then, DeGeneres has lamented that she was “kicked out of show business” for being “mean.”
“The hate went on for a long time and I would try to avoid looking at the news,” DeGeneres said last year. “The ‘be kind’ girl wasn’t kind. That was the headline.”
This is partly why DeGeneres decided to flee America and move to England.
“Ellen really felt she had made her mark on the industry, but that was diminished when she was cancelled over her alleged treatment of her staff,” a source told Daily Mail back in November. “Then to have celebrities call her out one by one was so hurtful.”
Related: Ellen DeGeneres Misses The ‘Comfort’ Of America After Fleeing To The UK – ‘It’s Been Difficult…’
DeGeneres Was ‘Ready To Leave’
The insider went on to say that the “all the ill will towards” DeGeneres in America partly led to her decision to leave.
“She has the one person that still loves her, Portia, and she is ready to leave everyone who in her mind left her hanging out to dry. If she considers it her retirement, so be it,” the source said. “An enormous part of the US doesn’t like her because of her sexual preferences, and others were turned off by her persona, which some perceived to be fake in the wake of the work place allegations.”
“For Ellen, it’s easier to move away from her problems than to confront them,” the insider concluded. “It seems like a sad end to what she once was in people’s minds.”
Since DeGeneres fled the U.S. partly to escape her past, she likely won’t be happy that Schirripa is reminding the world about her negative reputation stateside. In the end, it doesn’t seem like DeGeneres will be coming back to America anytime soon!
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