Ellen DeGeneres accused of calling 11-year-old boy 'fat and stupid'
- 09 Aug 2020
The controversies surrounding Ellen DeGeneres cease to stop, with the world famous celebrity finding herself in a spot yet again.
The talk show host has now been accused of “bullying” an 11-year-old boy in a pre-fame incident, while she was working as a recruiter in her 20s.
Speaking to DailyMailTV, Ben Gravolet made a series of claims about DeGeneres’s behaviour when she worked in New Orleans at a company owned by his mother, in the late 70s.
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Gravolet alleged that when he was an 11-year-old child and DeGeneres was around 20 years old, she would regularly subject him to insults.
“She would criticise my weight. I would try to do homework in the office, she’d call me stupid, she’d call me fat. She would criticise my clothes,” Gravolet said.
“I was just a boy and this was a grown woman who took pleasure in seeing me become visibly upset.”
Gravolet, now 52 years old, called the television presenter “the meanest, nastiest, most horrible person.”
Gravolet’s allegations follow recent claims by staff on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" that racism, bullying and sexual harassment were rife behind the scenes.
DeGeneres, who was not personally accused in the allegations to date, subsequently issued an apology to her staff in which she promised that she is “committed to ensuring this does not happen again.”
The show is now undergoing an internal investigation into its workplace environment by WarnerMedia.
Meanwhile, earlier this year, DeGeneres found herself at the centre of several accusations of “mean” behaviour after comedian Kevin T Porter pledged to donate $2 (Dhs7.35) to a Los Angeles food bank for every “insane story” his Twitter followers tweeted to him about her.
He branded DeGeneres “notoriously one of the meanest people alive.”
One story claimed that DeGeneres would send her staff home if they had failed to chew gum before speaking to her.
A number of celebrities have defended DeGeneres amid mounting criticism, including Katy Perry, Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Hart, and DeGeneres's wife, actor Portia de Rossi.