26 Ellen DeGeneres Transcript Eric: I’m Eric Marcus from Making Gay History. Over the course of two decades beginning in 1988 I conducted a hundred interviews with trailblazers from the LGBTQ civil rights move- ment. Now, with the Give Voice to History Project, I’m bringing some of those trailblazers into your classrooms to help tell the story of this part of the American Civil Rights Movement. Meet Ellen DeGeneres. Of course, you probably feel like you already know her. Watching her on TV, it’s easy to believe that she’s always been “Ellen”— out, proud, and maybe the most famous lesbian in the world. But it wasn’t always that way. Let’s go back to 1997, when Ellen came out in the most public way possi- ble. Back then, most LGBTQ people in show business stayed in the closet to protect their careers. She knew she was risking everything by going public. But when I interviewed her in 2001, Ellen told me that coming out in real life—and as her character on her TV sitcom in front of 42 million viewers— was something she just had to do. Ellen: So for me on the show to be able to say,“I’m gay,” was like… I mean, I cried every take we did. Every time we did that. Even in rehearsal I’d cry when I did it. Because it was such a release for me. I mean that goes back to… God, you know, so much that’s around that that just cracked open when I said it. Eric: When the show was over, when you finished taping, was there a reac- tion from the audience at the end? Was there… What was the feeling on the set? Ellen: I think I was too high to even know. I was like… Everybody said I looked like, you know, something had just lifted off of me. Eric: Did it? Ellen: Yeah. I’m sure. I’m sure. I let go of a heaviness, you know. We had to clear out pretty fast because there was a bomb threat. The studio had a bomb threat. So we had to get out real quick. Eric: The bomb threat was because of you and your show, I assume. Ellen: Yes. Yeah. It wasn’t for the catering. Yeah. Eric: What kinds of letters did you get? You said you got hate mail and you also got other mail. What kinds of letters did you get? Ellen: People telling me, writing me or telling me, that they came out because of me. Realizing they were gay because of me. That they didn’t realize it. And also, you know, the parties that went on around the country that night. Like, when else have we had an excuse to have parties like that? Like, I wish that would happen again. I wish somebody would do something so I could have like that kind of… Because it really did feel like this magical… Like everybody can remember that night. Like espe- cially in the gay community. You know, it’s just like what happened for every- body. We united and we felt like, you know… And I can’t really feel that because it was… I’m just… I’m in it so I don’t know what that was like. But I can imagine what that must have been like for everybody else to have that kind of party. And someone called from New York and said, you know, you could just hear like cheering from other apart- ment buildings. And you could… And that the streets were empty. And restau- rants were closing. And that seems like a lot of fun, you know? Being a comedian it’s a very different thing than being an actor. Because when you’re a comedian you actually 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 Ellen DeGeneres, 1997. Photo by Featureflash Photo Agency/Shutterstock.com.