The Ellen Degeneres Show is under investigation, it has been announced.
The popular series has been the subject of complaints about toxic behavior in the workplace for a while now.
And, according to Variety an internal investigation is to be carried out by WarnerMedia due to issues on the set of the show, as well as behind the scenes.
Executives from series producer Telepictures and distributor Warner Bros. Television sent a memo to workers several days ago saying confirming that they have engaged WBTV-owner WarnerMedia’s employee relations group and a third party firm.
This firm will speak with current and former staffers on the beloved daytime talker.
The series, which has long been the crown jewel on daytime TV has found itself in hot water, with complaints being lodged by current and former workers.
BuzzFeed News published a piece earlier this month, which detailed an alleged toxic work environment behind the scenes.
The report asked one current and 10 ex-staffers about what the show was like to work on, and let’s just say they were not all positive about the show.
One African-American woman said she experienced what she described as “microaggressions” and was “reprimanded” by producer Ed Galvin.
This was allegedly in response to her asking for a raise, as well as asking that certain members of the staff should undergo diversity and inclusion training.
Another former spoke out about racist remarks by coworkers about her hairstyle.
She said that a senior-level producer told her and a fellow Black employee, “Oh wow, you both have box braids; I hope we don’t get you confused.”
Even also alleged a writer joked to her, in front of others, that they only remembered the names of white staffers.
Ellen has been on TVs for decades, and her talk show garners a lot of A-list guests.
But Ellen herself has also been accused of not being nice to her staff.
However, the people in the Buzzfeed article took aim at the producers of the show.
“People focus on rumors about how Ellen is mean and everything like that, but that’s not the problem,” one ex-employee said, adding:
“The issue is these three executive producers running the show who are in charge of all these people [and] who make the culture and are putting out this feeling of bullying and being mean.”
“They feel that everybody who works at The Ellen Show is lucky to work there:
“‘So if you have a problem, you should leave because we’ll hire someone else because everybody wants to work here.'”
Executive producers Ed Glavin, Mary Connelly and Andy Lassner recently opened up about the article.
“Over the course of nearly two decades, 3,000 episodes and employing over 1000 staff members, we have strived to create an open, safe and inclusive work environment,” they said.
“It’s not who we are and not who we strive to be, and not the mission Ellen has set for us.
“For the record, the day-to-day responsibility of the Ellen show is completely on us.
“We take all of this very seriously and we realize, as many in the world are learning, that we need to do better, are committed to do better, and we will do better.”
“We are truly heartbroken and sorry to learn that even one person in our production family has had a negative experience.”
Paul Dailly is the Associate Editor for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.