Ellen DeGeneres: the coming out of the closet that caused a wave of homophobia (and bomb threats)


The night of April 30, 1997, during prime time, 42 million viewers tuned in to ABC to witness a television milestone: the coming out of the closet of Ellen Morgan, the character who Ellen Degeneres embodied in the successful series ‘Ellen’. So, 25 years ago, the presence of the LGTBI community on the small screen (especially in regard to leading roles) was negligible, almost anecdotal. But thanks to ‘The episode of the puppy’ – the title that chapter received – the tables changed forever.

In December 1996, when DeGeneres appeared on “The Larry Sanders Show,” actor and comedian Garry Shandling had no qualms about asking her why Morgan hadn’t been intimate with any men. His answer could not be clearer: “he would have done it, if someone feminine enough had appeared”.

The question did not take him by surprise. In fact, as detailed in ‘Vanity Fair’ by Dava Savel, who was the executive producer of the ‘sitcom’, a little earlier, in May 1996, the star had already met with part of her team to expose them to an idea: take advantage of the end of the fourth season to reveal his sexual orientation to the world. Not only that of her fictional alter ego, but also hers.

the dark stage

“Nobody understood how dark that stage was for me. I was really in a deep depression. She had never been so depressed in my life,” she recalled in 2017 to the Associated Press news agency.

The road to exoneration was not easy. “Actually, the reason we called it ‘The Puppy Episode’ is because when the writers told the execs they wanted me to come out, since my character needed to be in a relationship after four years of not being in one, someone from the studio said, “Well, get her a puppy. She’s not going out,” he clarified five years ago on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” the popular “talk show” he has been hosting since 2003.

Despite this initial rejection, Dean Valentine, the former president of Walt Disney Television –owner of the ABC chain–, he did have a surprisingly positive reaction. Once his approval was obtained, the machinery was set in motion. Everything, down to the smallest detail, was kept secret. So much so that, as he explained in the Associated Press, “the scripts were written on red paper so that the black ink would not show. They were destroyed at the end of each day and kept in a safe. It was crazy. It was as if We were spies or something.”

Inflection point

In any case, the great turning point for DeGeneres occurred on April 14, 1997. That day the newsstands woke up with a new issue of ‘Time’ magazine whose cover could read: “Yep, I’m gay”. “I don’t think I would have been able to do this a long time ago. I don’t think people would have accepted it as easily as they do now. Right now, I feel comfortable with myself. And I don’t have to be afraid that something like that will hurt my career because now I have the control, more or less. Nobody can hurt me, “he assured in the prestigious publication.

After that, he gave two more interviews. One to journalist Diane Sawyer, and another to Oprah Winfrey. The latter was famous because the actress sat next to her Anne Heche, his partner at the time. Upon seeing her, Pastor Jerry Falwell called her “Degenerate Ellen.”

The live and public recording of ‘The Puppy Episode’ was not without controversy. ‘ABC’ received a barrage of homophobic letters. there was even two bomb threats minutes before the cameras turned on.

Punishment of Laura Dern

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Although if someone was affected by lending himself to a cameo, without a doubt, that was the actress Laura Dern: after getting into the skin of Susan, the woman with whom Ellen Morgan fell madly in love, Hollywood dispensed with his services for almost two years. The other guest stars who supported DeGeneres in the historic episode – Winfrey herself, KD Lang, Demi Moore, Gina Gershon, Jenny Shimizu or Billy Bob Thornton – also faced animosity from the audience.

The puppy episode won a Peabody Award and an Emmy for Best Writing for a Comedy on September 14, 1997. Ellen only had one more season and was canceled on July 22 of the following year. However, her legacy is undeniable: she opened the doors wide for American fiction to finally include more plots and characters with LGTBI weight. Since then television has never been the same.


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