Ellen DeGeneres, Portia de Rossi to move to Australia, reveals source: 'It's either Australia or bust for them'
‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’ will end its run in 2022, after its upcoming 19th season. In a recent interview, DeGeneres said, “When you’re a creative person, you constantly need to be challenged — and as great as this show is, and as fun, as it is, it’s just not a challenge anymore.” But the show’s end may not be the only big change in DeGeneres’s life.
DeGeneres is now rumored to be planning a move to Australia with her wife Portia de Rossi once her talk show ends. If this is true, then it makes sense. De Rossi is an Australian-American and grew up in Grovedale, a suburb of Geelong, Victoria in Australia. As per reports, the couple wants to leave the bright and loud Hollywood for a quieter life on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula, just an hour from Melbourne. “There really is no choice in the matter. It's either Australia or bust for Portia and Ellen,' a source told the press.
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DeGeneres and de Rossi aren’t the only ones to have chosen Australia over Hollywood. Chris Hemsworth and Elsa Pataky left the bright lights of Hollywood in 2015 when he moved from Los Angeles to Byron Bay, New South Wales in his native Australia.
Last year, Sacha Baron Cohen and Isla Fisher relocated their family from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia. Fisher, who was raised in Perth, said, "I feel like I can be myself in Australia. I love the people. I love the colors and the sights and the taste and the smells. And there's something about being home which is just... it feels very magical."
Announcing her daytime talk show coming to an end, DeGeneres had said, “Today I'm announcing that next season, Season 19, is going to be my last season. The past 18 years ... have changed my life. You all have changed my life. I am forever grateful to all of you for watching, for laughing, for dancing — sometimes crying... This show has been the greatest experience of my life and I owe it all to you.”
Despite her aforementioned reasons for the show coming to an end, there is more to it that DeGeneres would admit to. In July 2020, a BuzzFeed report detailed allegations from many former Ellen employees who said the show was a horrible, hostile workplace, full of angry and abusive behavior. Allegations detailed a workplace culture where sexual harassment and inappropriate touching were pervasive. This prompted an internal WarnerMedia investigation.
Executive producers Ed Glavin and Kevin Leman, and co-executive producer Jonathan Norman had been fired in response to the complaints, but DeGeneres herself did not step down. Soon after the investigation was launched, DeGeneres sent a letter to staff, responding to former employees who said racism, fear, and intimidation were commonplace. In her message, DeGeneres said she had come to rely on others to stay on top of the daily operation, but added: “My name is on the show and everything we do and I take responsibility for that.”