Ellen DeGeneres misses the days of entertaining fans through the small screen.
“I’ve nothing really going on and I really miss being on TV,” DeGeneres, 68, said on the Friday, October 16, episode of The Graham Norton Show, per People. “I miss a lot about it — laughing with the writers and the audience.”
DeGeneres previously hosted The Ellen DeGeneres Show for 19 seasons before it came to an end in May 2022. The comedian and her wife, Portia de Rossi, moved to the U.K. two years later.
“I think about doing stuff here. I think it is pretty easy to get on TV here,” she joked. “You have a pottery show, you have a sewing show and you even have a show about people watching TV shows.” (DeGeneres was referring to U.K. TV shows including The Great Pottery Throwdown, The Great British Sewing Bee and Gogglebox.)
When DeGeneres first announced her talk show was coming to an end, the Finding Nemo actress explained that she was looking for another challenge.
“When we did our 3,000th show, they showed that highlights montage, and everybody was emotional. We all hugged and everyone had tears in their eyes, and [WB unscripted TV president] Mike Darnell was here, going, ‘You really want to [end this]?’” DeGeneres, who faced toxic workplace allegations before her talk show’s conclusion, recalled to The Hollywood Reporter in May 2021. “Look, it’s going to be really hard on the last day, but I also know it’s time. I’m a creative person, and when you’re a creative person, you constantly need to be challenged.”
She continued, “I just needed something to challenge me. And as great as this show is, and as fun as it is, it’s just not a challenge anymore. I need something new to challenge me.”
DeGeneres and de Rossi, 53, relocated to the English countryside in 2024. The move was partially influenced by President Donald Trump’s reelection.
“We got here the day before the election and woke up to lots of texts from our friends with crying emojis, and I was like, ‘He got in,’” DeGeneres recalled of Trump, 80, in an interview with English broadcaster Richard Bacon. “And we’re like, ‘We’re staying here.’”
Ultimately, the couple fell in love with their new home and the neighborhood around them.
“We’re just not used to seeing this kind of beauty,” she shared. “The villages and the towns and the architecture — everything you see is charming, and it’s just a simpler way of life. It’s clean. Everything here is just better — the way animals are treated, people are polite. I just love it here.”
