Ellen DeGeneres confirmed that U.S. President Donald Trump is the reason she left the United States and moved to the U.K.
In her first public appearance since leaving the U.S. last year, DeGeneres, 67, was asked at a conversation event if the reports that she moved to the U.K. because of Trump, 79, were correct and she simply said, “Yes.”
“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 told broadcaster Richard Bacon in Cheltenham, England, on Sunday. “And we’re like, ‘We’re staying here.’”
DeGeneres had nothing but good things to say about her new home in the aristocratic Cotswolds region, telling Bacon that life “is just better” in the U.K.
“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.
“It’s clean. Everything here is just better. The way animals are treated, people are polite. I just love it here.”
DeGeneres said she and her wife, Portia de Rossi, moved in November 2024, “which was not the ideal time,” but she was able to see “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,” she said.
The comedian also addressed allegations of a toxic workplace culture on her former talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, during her conversation with Bacon.
“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. 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 said she misses “a lot” about her show and that it was “certainly an unpleasant way to end” it.
Get daily National news
Get the day’s top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.
DeGeneres said she doesn’t think a show with a similar format as The Ellen DeGeneres Show would work anymore.
“I mean, I wish it did, because I would do the same thing here. 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 information and entertainment,” she said.
DeGeneres said she doesn’t know what she wants to do in the future but she will be picking her next project “very carefully.”
“I just don’t know what that is yet,” she said. “I want to have fun, I want to do something. I do like my chickens but I’m a little bit bored.”
DeGeneres and de Rossi moved to England last November after selling their home in Montecito, Calif., in August.
At the time, The Wrap spoke to sources close to the comedian and the Arrested Development star who told the outlet the couple are likely to “never” return to the U.S. on a permanent basis.
DeGeneres is not the first American celebrity to discuss the idea of moving abroad — or actually do it — after Trump took office in January.
In March, comedian and actor Rosie O’Donnell revealed that she’s no longer living in the United States and confirmed that she moved to Ireland.
“Moved here on January 15 and it’s been pretty wonderful, I have to say. The people are so loving and so kind, so welcoming. And I’m very grateful,” O’Donnell said.
O’Donnell, 63, said she’s currently in the process of getting her Irish citizenship, and that she has Irish grandparents.
“I miss my other kids. I miss my friends. I miss many things about life there at home and I’m trying to find a home here in this beautiful country and when it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America, that’s when we will consider coming back,” she said.
More recently, Trump threatened to take away any chance of O’Donnell moving back to the U.S. after saying he is giving “serious consideration” to revoking her citizenship.
Earlier this month, Trump posted about the actor and comedian on Truth Social, writing, “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.”
“She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA,” he added in his post.
In response, O’Donnell shared a photo of Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, writing, “hey donald – you’re rattled again? 18 years later and I still live rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours.”
“You call me a threat to humanity – but I’m everything you fear: a loud woman a queer woman a mother who tells the truth an american who got out of the country b4 u set it ablaze,” she continued. “You build walls – I build a life for my autistic kid in a country where decency still exists you crave loyalty.”
“I teach my children to question power you sell fear on golf courses – I make art about surviving trauma. You lie, you steal, you degrade – I nurture, I create, I persist,” she wrote. “You are everything that is wrong with america – and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it.”
“You want to revoke my citizenship? go ahead and try, king joffrey with a tangerine spray tan i’m not yours to silence i never was.”
— With files from Global News’ Michelle Butterfield
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
