Ellen DeGeneres says she decided to make the U.K. her permanent home because of Donald Trump‘s re-election as U.S. President.
Making her first public appearance since leaving the U.S. last year, the chat show host revealed that she decided to settle in the U.K. with her wife Portia de Rossi the day after Trump won his second term in office in November 2024.
“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’,” she said in an on-stage conversation with U.K. host Ricard Bacon, according to the BBC. “And we’re like, ‘We’re staying here.’”
But DeGeneres was full of praise for her new home, asserting that life “is just better” in the U.K. compared to the U.S.
“It’s absolutely beautiful,” she 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.”
She added: “It’s clean. Everything here is just better — the way animals are treated, people are polite. I just love it here.”
DeGeneres also discussed moves in the U.S. to endorse the reversal of a Supreme Court case that allows same-sex marriage, adding that she was considering getting married again 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.”
In the conversation with Bacon, DeGeneres addressed allegations of a toxic workplace culture on her talk show in the U.S. from former workers and being branded as “mean” in some press circles.
“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?,” she said.
“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,” she added. “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.”
But DeGeneres admitted that it was “certainly an unpleasant way to end” her talk show.