Ellen Steps Out

ABC's Jamie Tarses promises that won't happen. "This is not a 'date of the week' show," she says. "It never has been. It will be another aspect of her character. This is not going to be a day in the life of Ellen DeGeneres, lesbian." The producers say they're a long way from Ellen's kissing another woman, even though that taboo has been broken on "Roseanne" and "Relativity"--both ABC shows. The network is sending out mixed signals, refusing to run a pro-gay ad from the Human Rights Campaign, although $1 ABC affiliates will run the spots locally.

NATURALLY, THE INTERNET has been buzzing with "Ellen" mania for months. Around the country, gay organizations are planning "Come Out With Ellen" parties. One ABC staffer already has. Jill Lessard, the show's publicist, asked to appear as an extra in a scene set in a gay coffeehouse, then decided to come out herself as well. "I just got swept up in the moment," she says.

The moment, when it comes, may well seem a little anticlimactic after all the hype. In subsequent episodes, Ellen will come out to her parents, then her boss. Viewers might start wondering, Who's she gonna tell this week? Enough already! "I hope it does what Ellen intends, and that's to send a positive message about lesbians and gays in general to the American public," says Vance DeGeneres, Ellen's brother and a writer on the show. As a career move, coming out personally is risky and courageous. She has more at stake than ABC--which has watched this former top-10 show drop to No. 30 in the last two years-and Disney, which has already sold the reruns into syndication. There isn't exactly a big call for lesbian leading ladies in Hollywood. Vance DeGeneres is worried about "the danger of Ellen being typecast." Not to mention the danger of some nut trying to physically harm her.

The media hoopla aside, there is something refreshingly honest about DeGeneres's decision to emerge from the closet. Her one attempt at a big-screen romantic comedy, "Mr. Wrong," bombed, maybe for the same reason Ellen's hetero love life has always fizzled on the show. Now, at least, she's playing herself, or someone a lot closer to herself than before. "She feels on top of the world," Savel says of DeGeneres. "She's so happy the show was done right. It was everything she wanted it to be. So in that sense, she's free."

MARK MILLER and JOLIE SOLOMON

© 1997