Midway through her first stand-up special in 15 years, Ellen DeGeneres pokes fun at her first appearance on Johnny Carsons Tonight Show. In 1986, DeGeneres made her network TV debut on the NBC program—and sounded jarringly meek when she thanked Carson after her set. “That was before I got my new voice,” DeGeneres jokes, after showing the clip. “That was my first voice.”
The bit is typical of Relatable, a stand-up set that doubles as a self-reflective character study. Throughout the hour, DeGeneres dances and jokes about mundane experiences, like dining out and the indignities of flying. But she also intentionally, carefully underscores something many celebrities are terrified to let their fans remember: her life is nothing like those of the people who have come to see her.
As DeGeneres explains, she has to dance—and she also has to be kind to a fault, thanks to the persona shes been projecting on her daytime talk show for 16 seasons. “When you do something stupid, youre just a person someone saw doing something stupid,” she says at one point. “When I do something stupid, its a story.” Every time she tells an observational anecdote, theres also a twist built to remind us just how rarified the air DeGeneres breathes is. The restaurants where she eats? Theyve all got bathroom attendants. When she jokes about emotional-support animals on airplanes, she has to take a pause: “10B; does the plane go back that far? Ive never been back there.”
DeGeneres is currently daytimes most established personality; even if you dont watch her show, youre familiar with her specific brand of sunny energy. But her success, as she reminds us in the special, was hard-won and not at all guaranteed: soon after both she and her Ellen character came out in 1997, the sitcom was canceled, and it would be three years before she returned to the air. She has since starred in Pixar movies, received a Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama, and been the face of CoverGirl.
The job of any talk-show host is to connect with audiences, no matter how different their lived experiences might be from those of their viewers—and Relatable, more than anything, is proof that DeGeneres is a master of that art. Because even as DeGeneres actively notes the differences between herself and her fans, most will come away from the show feeling closer to the comedian than ever.
Thats because for all of her quips about being wildly rich and famous, Relatable is also deeply personal—in a very specific and circumscribed way. DeGeneres talks frankly not only about losing her TV series, but also the people who abandoned her when she came out of the closet on The Ellen Show. (At one point, she imagines acting as a spokesperson in a commercial for homosexuality: “Side effects may include loss of friends, loss of family, unemployment.”) She recalls growing up so poor in New Orleans that her father could only buy $1 of gas at a time. She ruminates on the death of her girlfriend decades ago, a tragedy that inspired her to write what would become her first piece as a comedian. Throughout, she speaks matter-of-factly, betraying not an ounce of sorrow, bitterness, or preachiness; DeGeneres wants to tell us about her hardships, but she doesnt want us to dwell on them.
DeGeneres also speaks with the confidence of someone who not only knows herself, but has a pretty good impression of how she is known by everyone in the room. She loves to play with our perceptions not only of her, but of rich people more broadly. Just as she gets personal but not emotional while talking about her most difficult experiences, the comedian avoids getting too specific about her lived reality as an astronomically wealthy person. Instead, she cracks jokes that situate her in an imagined state of stereotypical wealth: her fictional butlers, the time she pumped gas into the back seat of her car to avoid some petty embarrassment. After all, she says, “Ill buy a new car; I dont care.”
A less skillful comedian could easily have alienated her audience with material like this—but DeGeneres never does. She knows both who she is, and what she represents. After all, her viewers likely remember the journey that brought her where she is now. Televangelist Jerry Falwell responded to her coming out by calling her “Ellen DeGenerate”; a few years ago, a conservative Christian group boycotted JC Penney for casting DeGeneres in one of its holiday commercials. Nobody can say that DeGeneress ability to succeed while living authentically came easy—and that gives her latitude to crack wise about all she has without coming off as entitled.
All of these contradictions make Relatable a fascinating piece, and one that only DeGeneres could pull off—a testament to the potency of the new voice shed find eventually, long after Carson first beckoned her onto his couch. However un-relatable DeGeneres might claim to be, her special feels like a joyous invitation; perhaps, the next one wont take 15 years to arrive.
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Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Laura BradleyLaura Bradley is a Hollywood writer for VanityFair.com.
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