Washington [US], May 28  (HornbillTV/ANI): ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’, which started in the year 2003 and was hosted by Ellen DeGeneres, has come to an end after 19 seasons on the air.

For the last episode of the daytime talk show, DeGeneres had invited Billie Eilish and Jennifer Aniston along with her close friend pop star Pink as guests. Aniston was the inaugural guest on the show in 2003 and the Thursday episode marked her 20th appearance.

According to Fox News, the comedian opened the series finale with a montage of her show entrances throughout the years before going into her monologue in which she reflected upon the societal progress she feels the world has made as it relates to the LGBTQ+ community of which DeGeneres has long been a part of.

She then went on to reveal the things she was not allowed to say on air when the show had started.

DeGeneres said, “When we started this show, I couldn’t say ‘gay’ on the show. I was not allowed to say ‘gay.’ I said it at home a lot. ‘What are we having for gay breakfast?'”

“We couldn’t say ‘gay.’ I couldn’t say ‘we,’ because that implied that I was with someone. I sure couldn’t say ‘wife,’ and that’s because it wasn’t legal for gay people to get married, and now I say ‘wife’ all the time,” she continued.

DeGeneres then expressed her thanks to all involved in making the show over the years, reported the outlet.

“I want to thank my staff and my crew once again, but most importantly, I want to thank Mary [Connelly], Andy [Lassner] and Craig [Peralta],” DeGeneres said of her executive producers and longtime chief of staff during her final signoff before she bid farewell the same way she had started her very first episode, sitting on a couch and turning off the TV as the stage doors closed behind her.

DeGeneres announced the end of her show in 2021 after a year of brutal headlines involving a toxic workplace scandal. She started the final season of her show by addressing the accusations of a toxic work environment and sexual misconduct allegations at the show that plagued the host’s reputation in 2020, as per Fox News.