Ellen DeGeneres won’t be having a gay old time on her new talk show.
Producers have ordered the lesbian comedian to avoid any discussion of homosexuality when her gab-and-variety show hits the air on NBC this fall, insiders say.
Execs at Telepictures, which also produced Rosie O’Donnell’s old show, issued the gag order — and DeGeneres, 45, is furious, her friends reveal.
“The fact of the matter is, Ellen didn’t really want to make her sexual orientation a focus of the show in the first place,” said a source close to the comedian.
“But she didn’t want to be ordered not to talk about her lesbianism, either.”
DeGeneres has become one of the highest-profile gay celebs in Hollywood since she “outed” herself on her hit sitcom “Ellen” in 1997. Now, she says, she wants to move on. I just want to be the person I was before this kind of overshadowed my life,” she said in an interview.
But DeGeneres doesn’t like being told what she can and can’t talk about on her own show, and she’s riled that Telepictures hired Ed Glavin to produce the program, her friends say.
Glavin was executive producer of “Jenny Jones” in 1995 when gay Scott Amedure shocked straight friend Jonathan Schmitz by revealing in front of a live “Jenny Jones” audience that he had a crush on Schmitz. Three days later, an outraged Schmitz killed Amedure.
Many gays held Glavin and the TV show responsible for Amedure’s death, and DeGeneres is worried that gay leaders will turn on her when they learn that Glavin is producing her show, pals say.
Ellen’s publicist denies that Ellen has any differences with Telepictures or Ed Glavin, but the close source said: “I think saddling her with a producer who was right in the thick of the ‘Jenny Jones’ thing is adding insult to injury, as far as she is concerned.”
