Ellen DeGeneres said she really misses being on TV while appearing on The Graham Norton Show, adding fresh comeback talk as she settles into life in the UK. The 68-year-old has already said she and Portia de Rossi are staying there, so the comment lands as more than nostalgia.
“I've nothing really going on and I really miss being on TV.” DeGeneres also said, “I miss a lot about it – laughing with the writers and the audience. I think about doing stuff here,” then joked, “I think it is pretty easy to get on TV here – you have a pottery show, you have a sewing show, and you even have a show about people watching TV shows!”
2024 move to the Cotswolds
DeGeneres and de Rossi bought a house in the Cotswolds in 2024, after she relocated to the UK that year and stepped away from the limelight following her final stand-up tour. The move matters because it puts her next career step in a different market, where she is already talking about work rather than simply a new address.
Last year, she told Richard Bacon, “It's absolutely beautiful,” and added, “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 also said, “It's clean. Everything here is just better - the way animals are treated, people are polite. I just love it here,” before adding, “I have chickens, and we had sheep for about two weeks,”
Portia de Rossi's horses
When DeGeneres and de Rossi decided to live in the UK full time, she said de Rossi could not live without her horses. “When we decided to live here full time, we knew that Portia couldn't live without her horses,” DeGeneres told The, adding, “We needed a home that had a horse facility and pastures for them.”
She later said they had initially planned to spend three or four months a year in the UK, but changed course after Donald Trump was re-elected US president. She told Richard Bacon at the Everyman theatre near Cheltenham in 2025, “We're staying here,” which is the clearest sign yet that the UK is now home base, even if a television return is still only a thought she says she is having.
UK TV and the next move
The practical read is straightforward: DeGeneres is not announcing a project, but she is openly signaling interest in working again. For a host whose name was built on TV, that makes her comments worth watching for any UK-based format or appearance that turns a passing remark into a real booking.
September added one more sign that the relocation is settled, when she and de Rossi were spotted with the Duchess of Sussex at the Three Horseshoes pub in Burford. For now, DeGeneres sounds less like someone plotting a comeback on paper than someone already living the life around it, with the return question still hanging over the move.
