Former joke writer for Ellen DeGeneres recalls horrific working conditions

By 
 August 30, 2025

Stories about disgraced former television talk show host Ellen DeGeneres keep coming out, and it appears as if she's just as bad, if not worse, than what everyone initially learned.

According to the Daily Mail, a former writer for the "Ellen DeGeneres Show" broke his silence on some of his experiences with the former sitcom star and talk show host, revealing that she was not pleasant to work with behind the scenes.

In one particular recollection, former joke writer for the show Greg Fitzsimmons said that a harmless mix-up with her script and the audience caused her to "seethe" as a result.

Fitzsimmons opened up about his experiences working with DeGeneres to fellow comedians Mark Normand and Sam Morril on the "We Might Be Drunk" podcast earlier this week.

What happened?

Fitzsimmons went all the way back to his early days with DeGeneres, recounting how she offered him to be the warm-up person before her show got started, given that she was impressed with him right off the bat. That was in 2003.

"She said, 'Greg, you're going to do it,'" Fitzsimmons recalled.

"And I was like, 'I don't want to be the warmup guy on a daytime talk show,'" he added. "And they were like, 'Well it's an extra four grand a week and it's 10 minutes a day."

Money aside, Fitzsimmons explained, the decision would eventually become one he would regret. He told one of the stories that made DeGeneres, in his self-censored description, a "c-word."

The Daily Mail noted:

In one instance, Fitzsimmons recalled how he told the live-studio audience to do a 'wave' any time he said the word 'banana' during his set. By coincidence, the same word was also in DeGeneres's script that day.

She was left confused and perturbed when the audience waved at her unexpectedly, then ordered them to stop and was left 'seething' when it happened a second time.

"Now, she hasn't seen the warmup. So she says banana, and the crowd does the wave," he said. "She's a control freak, so this is like the worst thing that could ever happen."

When it happened a second time, she lost her marbles.

Fear

The Daily Mail has exposed DeGeneres in recent weeks as a former staffer came forward to describe the working conditions on the show, and they're just as bad as everyone thought.

Others recalled staffers for DeGeneres being "scared, really scared" while working for her.

"I had written on a lot of shows before, and I knew what it was like to have tough bosses. I wrote for Bill Maher. I was tough enough, but then there were these first-time writers who cried. It was a lot of crying always,' Fitzsimmons said.

Not surprisingly, reps for DeGeneres didn't provide comment on the claims.

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