Jimmy Kimmel failed to tackle Ellen DeGeneres toxic workplace scandal during their in-person interview

The Daily Beast

Last night's Jimmy Kimmel Live! marked DeGeneres' first major sit-down interview since last summer's toxic workplace scandal. Kimmel and Ellen are longtime friends, so it isn't surprising that he didn't bring it up. But by not mentioning the controversy, Kimmel essentially gave Ellen a pass, says Matt Wilstein. "Hardly the toughest interviewer in the mediasphere, Kimmel was especially soft on DeGeneres, who is attempting some image rehab ahead of the premiere of her new HBO Max furniture show, Ellen’s Next Great Designer," he said. "They joked about smoking 'wacky-tobacky' and even played a quick round of 'Who’s High?' with pedestrians on Hollywood Boulevard. After all of that silliness, it would not have been easy to pivot into the serious allegations against her guest. And Kimmel didn’t try. Instead, he set DeGeneres up for a simultaneously endearing, humorous and concerning story about how she had to drive her wife Portia de Rossi to the emergency room for an appendectomy while very stoned." Wilstein added: "Now, obviously, Kimmel—who’s hosting DeGeneres’ buddy George W. Bush on his show this Wednesday night—is not Anderson Cooper or Oprah Winfrey. And a late-night comedy show is not necessarily the best place for DeGeneres to address the allegations, which included sexual misconduct by her top producers and the host herself accused of secretly being 'one of the meanest people alive.' But for it to not even come up reveals just how much celebrities tend to give their celebrity friends cover when low-level staffers suffer abuse. And it also raises the question of whether DeGeneres only agreed to the appearance under the condition that her scandal would be ignored—or if she just knew it would be."