Ellen DeGeneres Opens Up About Her Plans To Retire

Ellen DeGeneres is speaking out about her retirement plans. The 61-year-old comedian and TV personality got candid about the possibility of her walking away from her daytime talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show while speaking to Entertainment Tonight this week, admitting that she hopes she knows when it will be the right time to end it.

Ellen joked in the interview that she’ll say bye-bye to her hosting duties when people get tired of her, though she appeared to suggest that she has no plans to ditch her day job and enjoy her riches anytime soon after admitting last year that there was a possibility the series could end in 2020.

“I hope I know when. [Maybe] when people kind of are tired of me, and I think I’ll sense that,” she joked at a recent Netflix event for her latest special titled Ellen DeGeneres: Relatable, quipping, “Well, people get tired of people, especially in today’s age.”

“You know, I’ll walk away really when I stop having fun. I actually don’t care about the rest of the people,” DeGeneres then teased while talking about her retirement plan.

“If I’m having fun and no one’s watching, I don’t care. But if I’m not having fun and everyone’s watching, then I should walk away.”

Ellen has been fronting The Ellen DeGeneres Show ever since it first premiered on TV 16 years ago, back in September 2003.

Though rumors have been rife for a number of years now that Ellen could be looking to walk away from her job as host, it was announced back in 2016 that the hugely popular daytime talk show would at least be on air through 2020.

Variety confirmed that NBC Stations had renewed the show for what was then the next four years, though it’s as yet unclear if DeGeneres will continue on past the last renewal.

“Day in and day out Ellen delivers the best show on television,” Warner Bros. Domestic TV Distribution TV president Ken Werner said at the time, seemingly suggesting that the series would likely be renewed beyond next year if Ellen plans to continue on.

Rumors that the show could be coming to an end next year really started to swirl after DeGeneres admitted to The New York Times back in December that she had been considering retiring after the contract ends in 2020.

Ellen explained at the time that her wife, Portia de Rossi, had been encouraging her to retire, though her brother, Vance DeGeneres, had been urging her to keep on going.

“[Portia] gets mad when my brother tells me I can’t stop,” the star told the outlet, while de Rossi admitted that she’d actually like to see her wife return to acting and try other projects.

“There are other things she could tackle,” the Arrested Development star said.