Ellen DeGeneres confirmed that she and her wife Portia de Rossi moved to the U.K. because of Donald Trump. During an event the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham, England, on Sunday, DeGeneres told broadcaster Richard Bacon that Trump’s election in January spurred their permanent relocation to the Cotswolds.
“We got here the day before the election and woke up to lots of texts from our friends with crying emojis, and I was like, ‘He got in,’” DeGeneres recalled, according to the BBC. “And we’re like, ‘We’re staying here.’”
She acknowledged that living in the countryside has been a positive change from the U.S. “It’s absolutely beautiful,” the comedian said. “We’re just not used to seeing this kind of beauty. The villages and the towns and the architecture – everything you see is charming and it’s just a simpler way of life. It’s clean. Everything here is just better—the way animals are treated, people are polite. I just love it here. We moved here in November, which was not the ideal time, but I saw snow for the first time in my life. We love it here. Portia flew her horses here, and I have chickens, and we had sheep for about two weeks.”
DeGeneres expressed her concern about the state of LGBTQ+ rights in the U.S. and noted that she and de Rossi are considering getting remarried in the U.K.
“The Baptist Church in America is trying to reverse gay marriage,” she said. “They’re trying to literally stop it from happening in the future and possibly reverse it. Portia and I are already looking into it, and if they do that, we’re going to get married here.”
She added, “I wish we were at a place where it was not scary for people to be who they are. I wish that we lived in a society where everybody could accept other people and their differences. So until we’re there, I think there’s a hard place to say we have huge progress.”
Elsewhere during the conversation, DeGeneres reflected on her talk show Ellen coming to an end in 2022 after 19 seasons amid claims that she was fostering a toxic work environment. She previously addressed the controversy in her 2024 tour and her recent Netflix stand-up special, and echoed similar sentiments on Sunday.
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“No matter what, any article that came up, it was like, ‘She’s mean’, and it’s like, how do I deal with this without sounding like a victim or ‘poor me’ or complaining?” she said. “But I wanted to address it. It’s as simple as, I’m a direct person, and I’m very blunt, and I guess sometimes that means that… I’m mean?… I don’t think I can say anything that’s ever going to get rid of that [reputation] or dispel it, which is hurtful to me. I hate it. I hate that people think that I’m that because I know who I am and I know that I’m an empathetic, compassionate person.”
She added that it was “certainly an unpleasant way to end” her talk show. The comedian also acknowledged that she misses “a lot” about her show, but doesn’t feel that a similar format would work at this point.
“I mean, I wish it did, because I would do the same thing here,” she said. “I would love to do that again, but I just feel like people are watching on their phones, or people aren’t really paying attention as much to televisions, because we’re so inundated with with information and entertainment.”
With that in mind, she hasn’t figured out her next move yet career-wise. “I want to have fun, I want to do something,” she said. “I do like my chickens but I’m a little bit bored.”
DeGeneres isn’t the only American comedian to leave the country in the wake of Trump’s second election. Earlier this year, Rosie O’Donnell revealed that she relocated to Ireland shortly before Donald Trump took office for the second time. Trump responded by threatening to take away her U.S. citizenship.
From Rolling Stone US
