Ellen Steps Out

The rumor mill started churning back in September of last year, when word leaked that Ellen was going to "out" her character on the show. Rampant speculation followed about whether she'd out herself, too. The joke going around Hollywood was that the sequel to DeGeneres's best seller, "My Point... and I Do Have One," would be titled "My Sexual Orientation... and I Do Have One." When nothing happened, the whole thing started to look like a shameless publicity stunt designed to boost the show's sagging ratings. The truth was less sinister. ABC and Disney, the studio that produces "Ellen," were reserving the right to reject the coming-out script if they didn't like how it was handled.

WE REALLY NEEDED TO SIT down with people [at ABC and Disney] and convince them there was a future for this show with Ellen as a lesbian," says Dava Savel, one of the series's executive producers. The meetings started last July and August. DeGeneres went to Dean Valentine, president of Disney Television, and Jamie Tarses, the recently installed head of ABC Entertainment. (In her previous job at NBC, Tarses had championed the lesbian wedding on "Friends.") The producers loved the idea of an out Ellen. For one thing, Savel admits, they were "running out of ideas." Going into its fourth season, the show was getting stale. Ellen's romantic life was notoriously disastrous. For reasons that now seem obvious, she never clicked with guys. Marriage, or even a relationship, was out of the question. The situation was so desperate that the producers suggested to the network that Ellen get a puppy. "They said, 'Yeah. That's good'," recalls exec producer Mark Driscoll. "It was an indication of just how lost the show was that they would be excited by Ellen buying a puppy." As an inside joke, the writers titled the Ellen-comes-out show "The Puppy Episode."

Disney was in favor but cautious. "I said it was only worth doing if it was a great episode," says Valentine. "I told Ellen, I'm not interested in standing on political soapboxes. First and foremost, it has to be great TV." He rejected the first draft of the script because it didn't "dig deep enough into the character." The focus was on how Ellen's friends reacted to her being gay. The rewritten version deals more with Ellen's own feelings. Oprah's therapist scene was added, and a dream sequence cast with cameos by Demi Moore and "Sling Blade" Oscar winner Billy Bob Thornton. (Her gay pals Melissa Etheridge and k. d. lang also make supportive appearances.) And true to her character, Ellen doesn't get the girl in the end. "It's not going to be easy," says Savel. "We want people to see the struggle."

For DeGeneres, coming out may be less of a struggle than a relief. Unlike Ellen Morgan, she has never made a secret of her sexual orientation to the people around her. Either she told them or they already knew. (Through her publicist, DeGeneres refused repeated requests by NEWSWEEK: for an interview on this subject.) At Charlene's, a lesbian bar in DeGeneres's native New Orleans, a few of the regulars say they met her in the early '80s. They remember Ellen's being in love with a beautiful young woman who was killed in a car crash. Her death may have been the inspiration for DeGeneres's signature "Phone Call to God" routine, in which (distraught over her friend's death) one of the questions she puts to him is why fleas are allowed to live. The routine won her a contest sponsored by Showtime to be named Funniest Person in America. She used it again for her 1986 debut on "The Tonight Show." Johnny invited her over to the couch afterward-his ultimate compliment. "All of Ellen's comedy is from her life experience," says the bar's proprietor, Charlene. "It wasn't gay or straight. It related to everybody."

From New Orleans, DeGeneres moved to San Francisco in 1984. Bob Fisher, who managed comedians like Paula Poundstone and Dana Carvey, took her on as a client. He recalls her coming to him, seeming nervous, and saying, "I want you to know something. I'm gay." Fisher replied, "Yeah? And?" He was hardly shocked. "She was very relieved it wasn't an issue," he says. "I already knew Ellen was gay. It was sort of taken for granted. It didn't play a part in her act. She would neither confirm nor deny it to the press." Occasionally she got flack from some male comedians for being gay. "Several guys had crushes on her," Fisher says. She'd date, but sooner or later the men would figure out she wasn't interested. Eventually, he says, they'd clue in to the fact that the woman she lived with was her girlfriend.

So if everybody already knows, or suspected, that Ellen is gay, what's the big deal? There are at least two dozen gay characters in prime time, on shows like "Mad About You," "NYPD Blue" and "Cybill." There's a lesbian wedding practically every other week. But until now they've only had supporting roles. "Ellen" would be the first show built around a lesbian-and starring one. How big a difference will that make? Most of the sponsors haven't flinched. Chrysler pulled an ad off the April 30 episode, saying it didn't want to advertise in such a "polarized" environment. But a company spokeswoman says its ads will be back on ensuing episodes. Viewers in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco might not be fazed by a same-sex sitcom, but folks are a little more conservative in the part of America Hollywood types call "fly-over country." And Jerry Falwell is already fulminating against "Ellen Degenerate." Donna Miller, a 39-year-old mother of three who works at the Hamilton, Ohio, chamber of commerce, has always been a big fan of "Ellen." Now she's not sure. "That was a totally funny show," she says. Her 8-year-old daughter liked to watch because she's also named Ellen. "But I wouldn't let Ellen watch 'Ellen' after she comes out of the closet," Miller says. Her co-worker Jennifer Klus, who's 26 and single, is less ruffled by the prospect of a gay "Ellen," but says, "If the show is going to turn into 'let's explore what lesbian relationships really mean,' I wouldn't want to watch that."