Ellen DeGeneres shocked her talk show audience when she seemingly caught Leah Remini’s husband cheating on her on air.
Ellen discovered the “affair” when she decided to give Leah’s husband, Angelo Pagan, a ring during the show. DeGeneres explained to the audience that she and Remini were going to prank call Pagan to get revenge for a prank he had recently played on his wife. According to Leah, Angelo was on a business trip and staying in a hotel (bet you can see where this going).
Leah proved to be a terrible prank caller — her brilliant plan was for Ellen to ask Angelo random questions about his hotel in a silly voice. However, things got interesting when Angelo didn’t pick up the phone. Instead the audience heard a woman’s voice, and Remini grabbed the phone from DeGeneres while shouting an expletive.
“What the f***! Who is this?” she asked.
“This is Tiffany. Who’s this?” the woman responded.
Leah informed Tiffany that she was Angelo’s wife, and Tiffany could be heard questioning Angelo in the background.
“You’re married?” she asked.
You can check out the exchange below. As you can see, the prank call actually ends up being a prank on The Ellen DeGeneres Show viewers — the audience’s awkward silence is soon broken by the sound of bells, and DeGeneres and Remini start to giggle.
According to the Mirror , some Ellen viewers didn’t get the joke. Leah Remini later took to Twitter to inform her worried fans that Angelo Pagan isn’t cheating on her. She explained that the “affair” discovery was just a set-up to surprise her lucky audience with gifts worth hundreds of dollars.
Regarding the Ellen show today; it was just a joke to throw the audience off to surprise them with the gifts! Me and @apangelo are good!
— Leah Remini (@LeahRemini) December 17, 2014
At least Leah Remini was in on the cheating stunt. As Nicki Minaj recently found out, sometimes Ellen prefers to amuse her audience by pranking her unsuspecting guests .
Ellen DeGeneres might as well change her name to Ellen Be-Generous during the holidays — she’s one of the most giving talk show hosts when it comes to the free stuff that her audience members get. Each year she celebrates “12 Days of Giveaways” by giving her studio audience fantastic freebies like gift cards and electronics.
Ellen DeGeneres is such a giver that she even brought her generosity to the Conan audience. According to the Hollywood Reporter , DeGeneres made a surprise appearance on Conan O’Brien’s late night show, and she chastised O’Brien for not giving away enough free stuff to his audience. You can see how she makes up for Conan’s Grinch-iness in the video below.
Ellen DeGeneres might not be the best prankster, but she sure is good at playing Santa Claus (who wouldn’t want a pair of Jon Hamm’s used basketball shorts?).