Ellen DeGeneres denies any knowledge of 'insane' no-eye contact rule and how it started: 'It's not who I am'
During a Zoom call with her staff on Monday afternoon, August 17, Ellen DeGeneres confessed that she did not know where the infamous no-eye-contact rule came from, which reportedly prevented people from looking at her. “I don’t know where it started,” the 62-year-old talk show host said. “Please talk to me. Look me in the eye.” She added that the rumored rule was "insane" and she had no idea how the rumor started on her sets. “It’s crazy, just not true, I don’t know how it started. [It’s] not who I am," she said.
As we reported earlier the said rumor began when a senior executive from Australia's 'Today' show revealed that he was told not to look at or even speak to DeGeneres when she had appeared on the show back in 2013. The executive, Neil Breen, who currently has his own show, said that DeGeneres' staff had been the only ones who were allowed to interact and speak with her and 'walked on eggshells' around her.
They would also laugh loudly at her jokes during the interview, so much so that they were asked to be quiet. He also shared that DeGeneres' crew had been very dominating and dictated everything from the seating to the lighting as well as how the interview would work. Breen shared that he had found the entire situation rather 'bizarre'.
While speaking to radio station 4BC, where he is currently the host, Breen said that around seven years ago when DeGeneres had done a tour of Australia, she was supposed to co-host the 'Today' show but the plan kept changing and was watered down by her team. Later it was decided that she would do a sit-down interview with show host Richard Wilkins in Melbourne which meant that the production of the show had to be shifted from Sydney at the show's expense.
Breen recalled how he and Wilkins arrived at 'one of the plush hotels in Melbourne' on the day of the interview to be met by a lot of people from DeGeneres' crew. He shared, "the producer called us aside and said, 'Now Neil, no one is to talk to Ellen. You don't talk to her, you don't approach her, you don't look at her. She'll come in, she'll sit down, she'll talk to Richard and then Ellen will leave.' And I sort of said, 'Are you fair dinkum? I can't look at her?' I found the whole thing bizarre," he added.
Speaking of Ellen, he said, "I have no idea whether she's a nice person or not, I wouldn't have a clue. But I can tell you the people who work with her walked on eggshells the whole time. We're there to do an interview to promote what she's doing, but you can't look at her? Someone get real."
DeGeneres plans to have more interactions with her staff while working on the show’s upcoming season, which she was reportedly excited to get back to. The news came as the talk show host ousted three top producers from her show — executive producers Ed Glavin and Kevin Leman and co-executive producer Jonathan Norman — after employees came forward with accusations of sexual harassment and abuse against all three last month in an explosive Buzzfeed report. In a separate report, current and former staffers also accused the show of creating a "toxic" workplace environment, after which WarnerMedia launched an internal investigation into the allegations.