Ellen says she should’ve told viewers to ‘go f**k yourselves’ instead of ‘be kind’

In a new trailer for her stand-up special, Ellen DeGeneres: For Your Approval, the former talk show host catches her up fans up to what she’s been doing since The Ellen DeGeneres Show went off the air in 2022.

“I decided to take up gardening. I got chickens. Let me see, what else I can tell you,” she says as she pulls out a crumpled up paper from her pocket and appears to read off of the list. “Oh yeah, I got kicked out of show business,” she announces with a bright smile.

DeGeneres, 66, goes on to candidly address the headlines that proclaimed “the ‘be kind’ girl wasn’t kind,” as she puts it in the special, referring to the explosive Buzzfeed report that claimed she and her top producers fostered a toxic work environment on set.

According to her, the report wouldn’t have been such a big deal if she decided to use a very different sign-off on her show instead of her signature farewell message, “Be kind to one another.”

“Here’s the problem,” she explains in the special. “I’m the comedian who got a talk show and ended the show every day by saying ‘Be kind to one another.’ Had I ended the show by saying ‘Go f**k yourselves,’ people would have been pleasantly surprised to learn that I’m kind.”

It looks like DeGeneres isn’t under any illusions about her place in the business after that exposé claimed she was a toxic boss.

“I didn’t go into this business for money. It was about healing my childhood wounds,” she candidly says at one point.

“I thought, if I can make people happy, then they’ll like me. And if they like me, I’ll feel good about myself,” she says in the trailer. “And all I can say about that is: Thank God for the money.”

DeGeneres and her wife Portia de Rossi co-produce the series alongside Ben Winston. For Your Approval marks her first time back on the comedy stage in six years since her Netflix special Relatable.

But the comedian has already confirmed this will be her last stand-up special.

DeGeneres summed up For Your Approval in a single statement when the special was first announced: “To answer the questions everyone is asking me: Yes, I’m going to talk about it. Yes this is my last special. Yes, Portia really is that pretty in real life.”

Ellen DeGeneres: For Your Approval premieres on Netflix September 24.

This story originally appeared on Decider and was reproduced with permission