ADVERTISEMENT Comedian and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres is settling into rural life in the UK – and she’s not being subtle about why she left the United States.
Speaking at a packed event in Cheltenham, the former talk show titan said she and wife Portia de Rossi decided to make the move the morning after Donald Trump was re-elected president.
“Yes,” she confirmed, when asked directly by presenter Richard Bacon if Trump’s win was the reason for the move. “We got here the day before the election and woke up to lots of texts from our friends with crying emojis, and I was like, ‘He got in’. And we’re like, ‘We’re staying here’.”
Now based in the Cotswolds – one of England’s most picturesque regions – the 67-year-old says the decision was easy. “It’s absolutely beautiful,” she told the audience at the Everyman Theatre. “We’re just not used to seeing this kind of beauty. The villages and the towns and the architecture – everything you see is charming and it’s just a simpler way of life.
Since buying what she thought would be a “part-time house”, Ellen’s been sharing snippets of countryside life online – including updates on chickens and some escaped sheep. Portia has even flown over her horses. “It’s clean. Everything here is just better – the way animals are treated, people are polite,” she said, “I just love it here.”
But there’s a more serious undertone to the move. Ellen said the current political climate in the US – particularly threats to same-sex marriage – has made things increasingly difficult.
“The Baptist Church in America is trying to reverse gay marriage,” she said. “They’re trying to literally stop it from happening in the future and possibly reverse it. Portia and I are already looking into it, and if they do that, we’re going to get married here.”
She reflected on her experience as one of the first openly gay celebrities on US television, recalling how her sitcom was cancelled after she came out in 1997.
When asked if she’d inspired others to come out, she replied: “I would say no.” Despite some progress, she said Hollywood is still not a safe space for everyone. “If it was, all these other people that are actors and actresses that I know they’re gay, they’d be out, but they’re not, because it’s still a problem. People are still scared.”
That fear, she added, is something she hopes the next generation will move beyond. “The younger generation is going to show us the way. They’re just kind of fluid – more comfortable with it.”
She also tackled head-on the controversy that surrounded the final years of her talk show, which ended in 2022 following allegations of a toxic workplace.
“It’s as simple as, I’m a direct person, and I’m very blunt, and I guess sometimes that means that… I’m mean?” she said. “No matter what, any article that came up, it was like, ‘She’s mean’, and it’s like, how do I deal with this without sounding like a victim or ‘poor me’ or complaining? But I wanted to address it.”
She admitted the show’s ending was “certainly an unpleasant way to end”, and said the public perception of her still hurts. “I hate it. I hate that people think that I’m that because I know who I am and I know that I’m an empathetic, compassionate person,” she said.
That said, she hasn’t entirely ruled out a return to the spotlight – especially if it means doing something on this side of the pond.
“I would love to do that again, but I just feel like people are watching on their phones, or people aren’t really paying attention as much to televisions,” she said. Still, she’s keeping her options open: “I want to do something. I do like my chickens but I’m a little bit bored.”
So, could Ellen be Britain’s next big daytime star? Never say never.
