“I was trying to be, like, funny and, like, personable, and instead of, like, laughing with me, she was laughing at me,” says the former Bachelorette of her awkward encounter, before emphasizing she doesn’t think Ellen was being “mean, per se.”
Ali Fedotowsky-Manno is looking back on her awkward experience being interviewed by Ellen DeGeneres.
While appearing on Kaitlyn Bristowe’s Off the Vine podcast earlier this month, The Bachelorette alum recalled being “so excited” to appear on The Ellen DeGeneres Show amid her reality TV fame.
But, her on-air banter with DeGeneres had her felling anything but.
“It’s not that she was mean, per se. She just made me feel stupid,” Fedotowsky-Manno explained. “I don’t think she’s a bad person. Sometimes, I bet that you do a job like that all day, every single day for years, you’re just kind of over it.”
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She continued, “I was trying to be, like, funny and, like, personable, and instead of, like, laughing with me, she was laughing at me. Do you know what I mean? So I felt really stupid.”
While Fedotowsky-Manno didn’t specify when that uncomfortable exchange with DeGeneres occurred, she did appear on DeGeneres’ show twice back in 2010, the same year she was a contestant on The Bachelor and later became the star of The Bachelorette.
The reality-star-turned-TV-personality’s comments about DeGeneres come not long after the retired talk show host spoke about the backlash she received at the tail end of her career during her Netflix comedy special, Ellen DeGeneres: For Your Approval.
In the special, DeGeneres, who ended her eponymous talk show in 2022 after 19 seasons, joked about having been “kicked out of show business” for being “mean,” alluding to the allegations of workplace misconduct that surfaced in 2020 outlined in a pair of BuzzFeed News articles in which Ellen DeGeneres Show employees claimed they had been subjected to behind-the-scenes intimidation, racism, and sexual misconduct.
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While most of the claims were directed at senior members of DeGeneres’ staff and not the host herself, she later acknowledged that she was “in a position of privilege and power” and took responsibility in the matter, with the reports ultimately staining DeGeneres’ reputation.
Not long after the special — DeGeneres’ apparent final project as an entertainer — she and her wife, actress Portia de Rossi, packed up and reportedly relocated to the U.K., following Donald Trump’s election victory … a promise she made after the 2016 election but seemingly did not follow through with till now, after Trump won a second term.
