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It’s been almost two decades since The Ellen DeGeneres Show premiered.
The year was 2003, and it had been six years since Ellen DeGeneres came out to the world. On April 14, 1997, she appeared on the cover of TIME magazine along with the words “Yep, I’m Gay.” Two weeks later, “The Puppy Episode” on the ABC sitcom Ellen aired and her character Ellen Morgan came out, as well.
The episode won an Emmy and a Peabody Award, and DeGeneres received the GLAAD Media Award. But Ellen was canceled after its following season and, as she recalled during the May 4 episode of The Late Late Show with James Corden, a three-year “drought” ensued in which she could not find work.
“I just didn’t think I would work again,” she said, “because it didn’t seem like that would happen.”
About a year into not being able to get a job, DeGeneres’ neighbor, an astrologer, made a prediction.
“She told me when I was 45 years old, I was going to start a brand-new career, and it was going to be more successful than anything I’ve ever done. And it could go 20 years if I wanted,” DeGeneres recalled. “I was like, ‘What sitcom goes 20 years?’ I wasn’t even thinking talk show.”