Ellen DeGeneres Reveals What She Wants to Do After Talk Show Ends

Ellen DeGeneres announced the end of her hit talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Wednesday. The show will end after Season 19 in 2022, which coincides with the end of her contract. As far as what the comedian wants to do next, she’s staying fairly vague on the matter, though it’s possible fans may see her on TV or in movies, which populated her career — along with standup — up until the talk show.

“A sitcom seems like a walk in the park compared to this, 180 shows a year. I don’t know if that’s really what I want to do next, but movies for sure,” DeGeneres told The Hollywood Reporter. “If there were a great role, I’d be able to do that, which I’m not able to do now.” She added that she “wouldn’t have thought I was ever going to do a talk show when I stopped doing movies and sitcoms. I thought that was the only path. And then, all of a sudden, there was a talk show that took me on this 19-year journey.”

A moment of rest might even be possible, as she said her agent Eddy Yablans has suggested that she “sit still for a bit” while she figures out her next move. “Look, I don’t even know the answer. I’ve been trying to think about that,” she said when asked about her future. “I have some ideas, but my agent is just like, ‘Why don’t you just sit still for a minute. You probably don’t even know how exhausted you are and what it’s going to be like to sit still.’ And I don’t know how long I’ll be able to do that because I’m like a Ferrari in neutral. I’m constantly needing to go. So, that’s my first challenge and then I’m going to figure it out.”

DeGeneres and her wife, Portia de Rossi, are famously passionate about animal and environmental conservation, which DeGeneres says they will continue to involve themselves in. “I’m opening up my campus in Rwanda next year and I want to be more involved with conservation and everything that matters to me as far as the environment and animals.”

She said that after de Rossi “watched me come home every day saying, ‘I just feel like there’s something more I could be doing,’” that she wants her to “do things that I’m challenged by.” “I care about the environment. I care about animals. I care about design and furniture.”

The decision to end the show comes on a tumultuous year for the 63-year-old after the show was accused of having a toxic work environment. She said that the controversy, which she called “very hurtful” to her, “almost impacted the show.”

“I really, honestly, felt like, ‘I don’t deserve this. I don’t need this. I know who I am. I’m a good person.’ And I was sitting back going, ‘If I was someone watching this, I would think, “Well, there must be some truth to it because it’s not stopping.”‘ Of course, they’re going to believe this because I’m not addressing it because I was told not to and you can imagine what that felt like. And it’s a lot to live up to. I started saying ‘Be kind to one another’ because I really believe people should be kind to one another and so it was easy clickbait to say, ‘Oh, the be kind lady isn’t so kind.’ … I am kind, I’m also a woman and I’m a boss.”