Entertainment
‘I thought she was bulletproof’: Man behind ‘Ellen DeGeneres is mean’ Twitter thread never expected show to end as he responds to claims attack was ‘orchestrated’
When comedy writer Kevin T. Porter took to Twitter in March 2020 and asked people to share anecdotes about Ellen DeGeneres’ alleged mean behavior, he was not prepared for what happened next.
The thread went viral as tweets poured in from friends of those who had interacted with Ellen as well as people with first-hand experiences, all claiming that the comedian wasn’t living up to her ‘Be Kind’ persona.
What had been a unique way to help raise money for the LA Food Bank ended up highlighting issues within The Ellen Show set, leading to an internal investigation by WarnerMedia before they parted with three top producers.
A year later, Ellen has revealed her show is coming to an end in 2022 after its 19th season.
A move Kevin found ‘surprising’ as he told Metro.co.uk: ‘I always thought that she was kind of bulletproof. I imagine the accountability that happened last year was hard. It was a real drag to take the status hit, or the image hit, or whatever the impact that it had.’
Indeed, everything that happened after he shared his tweet was a truly unexpected outcome for the podcast host – especially because he began the thread on a whim.
He explained: ‘We were about two weeks into the lockdown and a lot of my friends were doing kind of interesting, creative things to raise money for different charities. So my version of that was to do the thread on Twitter because I thought it would be funny.
‘I truly did not put that much forethought put into it. I thought it would be super niche replies from the LA comedy scene. The intended audience was just for my immediate circle and maybe like a little layer outside of it. Not what ended up happening.’
Although the volume of tweets he received had been shocking, the comedian explained that he had heard several of the stories long before he took to Twitter that day.
Kevin told us: ‘The story about Ellen trying to get a waitress with chipped nail polish one with the waitress removed from the restaurant was one I’d heard before. As well as some of the weird like workplace stuff about eye contact, and sadistic gift giving.
‘Also, claims about the way she interacted with the staff that weren’t her executive producers were things I had heard those before. It was all pretty consistent with the rumor mill at the time.’
The podcaster added that he understood how ‘Twitter is all unverifiable to a degree’ but stated the ‘consistency’ of claims people sent his way is what people responded to and what he thinks made people take his thread seriously.
He explained: ‘I was surprised by the volume of responses. The consistency of the stories about Ellen was pretty overwhelming to me, especially because the only real kind of pushback came from celebrities who were like, “I was a guest on her show and she was really nice to me”.’
In interviews after announcing her decision to end the show, Ellen alluded to the idea that the volume of allegations she and producers faced in 2020 may have been an ‘orchestrated and coordinated’ attack.
Well this got out of hand! It’s now hard to tell which stories are real or not, so I’ve rounded up to 300 and donated $600! pic.twitter.com/dX08ybhdos
— Kevin T. Porter (@KevinTPorter) March 22, 2020
A suggestion that Kevin does not agree with.
‘I cut off the threat once it felt like people were starting to pile on and stories no longer felt like they were true,’ he explained.
In fact, Kevin claims that even more could have come out to the public as he added: ‘The people that have the most to say are under strict NDAs which stop them from saying anything. Like Greg Fitzsimmons, a comedian and owns a podcast, he’s made allusions to things in the past.’
He continued: ‘Karen Kilgariff, from My Favorite Murderer, used to be the head writer on the show and she followed me after the thread. This is someone who’s won Emmys working on Ellen back in the day so, to me, that was confirmation that there was some credibility to the claims.’
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Kevin argued that Ellen appeared to be making the mistake of seeing genuine criticism as something more sinister as he mused: ‘It did feel like a lot, but at the same time, it feels like 2020 just felt like everyone was reaping a lot of what they sowed.
‘If it felt like a barrage of unfairness or attacks for her for that time period was that she experienced it… it didn’t come out of nowhere, it was brewing for years. So I have less sympathy for her thinking it was an attack.’
He continued: ‘I think this is just a testament to the lack of awareness that comes with that level of power and celebrity. Just like the fact she continues to cling on to the idea that she’s kind when most people would be like, “Yeah, look, I can be a real jerk sometimes and I’ve like screwed up and I want to work hard to change that”.
‘Instead, she’s saying, “I didn’t know but I guess I’m responsible, technically”. That kind of game playing like that in the media is just very odd to me.’
When the thread first went viral, a friend of Kevin’s who used to work for Ellen messaged him to question why he was ‘bullying’ the star, an accusation he immediately refuted.
‘I remember saying, “She’ll be fine. This won’t affect anything”, he recalled. ‘I guess that wasn’t true to a degree. I put the responsibility of everything that’s happened since way more on the journalistic pieces over at places like BuzzFeed and everything else that came out.’
The comedy writer explained: ‘I feel like there was a succession of moments starting in mid-2019 with the George W. Bush controversy about her sharing the box with him.
‘Then that led into the awkward Dakota Johnson interview, and then my Twitter thread was like four months after that. Then the Buzzfeed pieces were coming out through the rest of 2020.’
He continued: ‘It was those pieces where it’s like, “Oh, it turns out like your EPs are racist and sexually harassing people and it’s a bad environment.” Buzzfeed did the work and actually verified this stuff by talking to so many people who worked on the show.’
Kevin admitted he could never have anticipated the way his tweet ended up being part of such a big scandal surrounding the show as he mused: ‘The Twitter thread felt like throwing rocks at an airplane, like “what’s going to happen?”
‘Maybe what’s happened is there’s been a shift in the pandemic of how people take accountability for this stuff. As more of our lives are lived on screens and online, maybe people do take this stuff with a little more credibility than they used to.’
The comedy writer never wanted to see people lost their jobs, however, Kevin was glad to see that the internal investigation resulted in changes on the team.
He stated: ‘I want everyone to actually be nice and be kind to each other. The one thing that was gratifying is that the flagrantly abusive men were punished. That was nice to see my thread being a small link in the chain to that conclusion.’
As for Ellen’s claim her decision to end the show was not due to the toxic workplace claims, Kevin still isn’t sure what to believe.
‘The timing is always gonna be weird,’ he mused. ‘Maybe that is the truth. I don’t know. I just can’t imagine that she was encouraged by her 2020 experience.’
Kevin added that the comedian hadn’t seemed as excited by her work on the show for quite some time as he continued: ‘I feel like you could see the light dimming from her eyes for the last decade on the show so it’s not a complete surprise she has decided to stop.’
The Ellen DeGeneres Show will end on season 19 in 2022.
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