Ellen DeGeneres reveals her creepy connection to ‘Annabelle’— and it’s stranger than you think
Ellen DeGeneres is known for her elaborate scare tactics and Halloween pranks. In 2014, she revealed her surprising connection to the famed demonic doll 'Annabelle'. "It is October, and there are two things I love to do in October: Scare people and watch people get scared," DeGeneres said. "Those are my two favorite things," she added. "By the way, an interesting fact, the apartment in the movie was the first apartment that I moved to in L.A," the seasoned talk show host revealed while introducing the cursed doll from the 'Conjuring' franchise on the sets of the show. "That was the building I lived in where they shot the movie," she added.
DeGeneres stated that while living in the Pasadena building, she had a 'haunting' experience. "I was watching it (the film), going, 'That looks familiar' and it was my building. It was scary back then too." The late-night host then expressed her gratitude to the producers of the film for sending her a replica. "Anyway, so the producers sent me Annabelle because I loved the movie, and I decided to take her around the office and surprise some people, mostly my producer Andy," she admitted jokingly. True to her nature, DeGeneres proceeded to scare her producer, Andy Lassner, and other members of the production team with the chilling on-set doll.
In September 2018, DeGeneres used another diabolic plan to scare her crew. Inspired by the movie 'Snakes on the Plane,' she dropped rubber snakes on one of her writers, Allison. "This is a house in Australia, and two pythons fell through the vent in the ceiling and ended up in someone's bedroom here. They're two pythons, they're two males, and they're fighting," she said during the segment. "And so I showed this to my writer, Allison, who is really scared of snakes. Because whenever I see a snake video, I show it to her because sharing is caring," she added jokingly.
DeGeneres then set up a fake meeting to scare the writer, "It gave me an idea. I called my executive producer, Kevin, and I said, what if, in tomorrow's morning meeting, we get the ceiling to open up and snakes drop on Allison?" she revealed in delight. During the meeting the following day, everyone pretended everything was normal. Then, DeGeneres pressed a hidden button that opened the vent, causing rubber snakes to fall from the ceiling and frighten Allison. "I had a button that was at my chair that I could push to release that.
So the only people who knew this was happening was Kevin and myself," she said. "So a lot of other people were also frightened. So this is what happened," she admitted while sharing the clip on screen for the audience. In the shared snippet from the meeting, everyone can be seen scrambling from their seats as the rubber snakes drop. On the other hand, DeGeneres can be seen laughing hysterically at her production team's reactions. "And I'm sorry Allison, but scaring is caring," she concluded. It remains to be one of the iconic pranks the comedian pulled in the history of her show.
