I told the crowd in Santa Rosa that this tour would be my final stand-up run<\/strong>, and that after my upcoming Netflix special<\/strong> I planned to step away from performing for good. The announcement felt both honest and bittersweet; a few of my scheduled shows had already been quietly canceled in cities like Dallas, San Francisco, Seattle, and Chicago, which only made the moment feel more real<\/p>\n Onstage I kept things light, because that\u2019s how I\u2019ve always handled the hard parts. I opened with a silly line \u2014 \u201cI got chickens\u201d<\/strong> \u2014 and then made a self-deprecating nod to the controversies that followed the end of my daytime show, joking that I\u2019d been \u201ckicked out of show business for being mean\u201d. The laugh was a shield and a bridge; it let me acknowledge the past while still owning my voice<\/p>\n The truth is complicated. For years I built a public image around the phrase \u201cBe kind,\u201d<\/strong> and that message connected me to millions. When allegations about a toxic workplace surfaced and my talk show ended in 2022, it was a painful collision between image and reality I\u2019ve\u00a0spent the time since then reflecting, doing charity work, and deciding how I want the rest of my life to look.<\/p>\n Looking back, my career has been full of milestones I never expected: coming out in the 1990s and changing how people saw LGBTQ+ stories on television, turning a sitcom into a cultural moment, and later creating a daytime show that blended humor and heart in a way that felt personal to viewers. I\u2019ve hosted the Oscars, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom<\/strong>, and used my platform to give away millions \u2014 moments that remind me why I started doing this in the first place.<\/p>\n Now I\u2019m choosing something quieter. I want to live on my own terms, enjoy simple pleasures, and let the work I\u2019ve done speak for itself. My final special will likely mix the observational comedy people expect from me with a few honest reflections, and I hope it will feel like a proper goodbye rather than an exit under pressure<\/p>\n Fans are processing this as the end of an era, and I understand that. I\u2019m not walking away in bitterness; I\u2019m stepping toward peace and a different kind of life \u2014 one where I can still find humor in the hard parts but without the constant glare of the spotlight<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ellen DeGeneres Calls It Quits I told the crowd in Santa Rosa that this tour would be my final stand-up run, and that after my upcoming Netflix special I planned … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1624"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1626,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1624\/revisions\/1626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readinstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}