“End of an era”: Richard Wilkins reflects on Ellen’s legacy
Following on from Ellen’ DeGeneres’ announcement that she will be ending her talk show after almost two decades, Richard Wilkins shared his experience working with her and watching her career grow over the years.
Commenting on the “swag of accolades” The Ellen DeGeneres Show has brought in - including three Emmys, 20 People’s Choice Awards, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom - Wilkins says the effort was “not bad for a gal from Louisiana, who found comedy as a way to escape complicated teen years”.
Wilkins goes on to describe the first time he interviewed the star about “a decade or so ago”.
“It was the coldest studio I’ve ever been in - figuratively and literally. It wasn’t just the temperature, which was freezing. I couldn’t work out whether it was to counteract the heat generated by the huge screens with the lighting, or just to keep everyone on their toes. But, man, it was cold,” he said.
“It was the weirdest of interviews,” he recalled. “Immediately after the credits rolled and the hysterical applause, a voiceover guy announced, ‘Please stay seated. Ellen’s going to be interviewed by Richard Wilkins from Australia. Come down, Richard - you’re on.”
Wilkins admits that the interview “was quite intimidating” as audiences watched Ellen “being grilled mercilessly by some bloke they’d never heard of before.”
“And I think it’s fair to say Ellen likes asking questions more than she likes answering them.”
As he recounted the two other moments he was face-to-face with the talk-show queen, Wilkins shared his shock over the claims surrounding the show but that he was “not really surprised”.
“She clearly knows what she wants and she doesn’t suffer fools badly,” he said. “And I imagine she was pretty tough on her staff. In a situation like that, I would assume where there’s smoke, there’s certainly a bit of fire about.”
Despite the hit in popularity due to the controversies and additional challenges from the pandemic, Wilkins said he “will be sad to see Ellen disappear from the screen” and that she deserved praise for making the show a success for so long.
But, he found it “kind of strange” that she would be looking for “a new challenge” when “making tomorrow’s show better than today’s show would be an ongoing challenge.”
Either way, he remarked that the end of the show will mark “the end of an era”.
“I wonder what we'll be doing at midday from now on when Ellen leaves a big hole in Nine's telecast schedule in a year's time. Congratulations to Ellen — we'll be interested to see what she comes up with next,” he concluded.