Ellen DeGeneres staged crew members in the audience to ‘avoid’ her fans

Just when fans thought the flack and criticism against Ellen DeGeneres had slowly started to dissipate, a new claim by a source has come forward which unveiled a new problem with the host.

During their interview with The Sun, a former assistant on the show opened up about Ellen’s disdain towards letting audience members get “too close” to her and in an attempt to make the TV show host comfortable, crew members from her own show would take off their work ID’s and plant themselves into the audience.

The insider was quoted telling the leading daily, “It was never a ‘kind’ place. Ellen’s ‘be kind’ philosophy was never mentioned to us when we were working.”

The source also revealed their true intentions during the course of the interview and admitted, I'm speaking out because I'm worried the people who enabled that 'toxic environment' to happen have got away with it and they're still working there."

“The audience members who don’t get a seat for whatever reason were taken to the Riff-Raff Room where they could watch the show on monitors.”

While, “Ellen would regularly go to say a quick ‘hi’ but what fans didn't know is staffers took off their IDs and pretended to be audience members, then got in-between Ellen and genuine audience members so she didn't have to get close to her fans."

The source also went on to admit, "I never knew why that was, I can only guess it was so she kept her own space. The show was always overbooked to make sure every seat was filled. There can’t be any vacant seats but they have to be filled with the right people, the best-looking people.”

Not only that but “Audience hopefuls are graded on their looks. The better-looking ones at the front so they get on camera more, the uglier ones at the back. Women were treated and judged by their appearance which is wrong.”

Touching upon one of her most uncomfortable encounters with the TV show host, the source explained, “I was with a colleague who had worked there longer than me. At this point, I hadn’t seen much of Ellen at all. We were walking down a corridor chatting, then ahead of us, Ellen appeared with a security guard, walking straight towards us."

“The person I was with immediately stopped talking, stopped walking, and stood with her back to the wall. I thought, ‘What the hell is going on?’ At first, I honestly thought it was a joke. But I could tell from my colleague's face it was serious.”

They concluded by saying, "So I followed suit. I shut up and stood with my back to the wall, too. Ellen walked past and didn’t even glance at us. We weren’t acknowledged by her in any way. I thought, ‘Ahh, so that’s how it goes around here.’"