Ellen DeGeneres became just the second person to receive the Carol Burnett Award at the 2020 Golden Globes on Sunday.
DeGeneres, 61, accepted the award as Burnett looked on in the audience. The honor, which recognizes achievement in television, was first awarded to Burnett in 2019.
“Saturday Night Live” star Kate McKinnon, 36, presented DeGeneres with the award by paying tribute to the comedian and talk show host with a story from her own childhood:
In 1997, when Ellen’s sitcom was at the height of its popularity, I was in my mother’s basement lifting weights in front of the mirror and thinking, ‘Am I gay?’ And I was. And I still am. But that’s a very scary thing to suddenly know about yourself. It’s sort of like doing 23andMe and discovering that you have alien DNA. And the only thing that made it less scary was seeing Ellen on TV.
She risked her entire life and her entire career in order to tell the truth, and she suffered greatly for it. Of course, attitudes change, but only because brave people like Ellen jump into the fire to make them change. And if I hadn’t seen her on TV I would’ve thought, ‘I could never be on TV, they don’t let LGBTQ people on TV.’ And more than that, I would’ve gone on thinking that I was an alien and that I maybe didn’t even have a right to be here. So thank you, Ellen, for giving me a shot at a good life.
DeGeneres, host of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show" since 2003, publicly came out as gay in Time magazine on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 1997. At the same time, Ellen Morgan, DeGeneres’ character on her sitcom, “Ellen,” came out to Laura Dern’s character, Susan, and Winfrey, who played her therapist on the show. The following year, ABC canceled the show, which had debuted in 1994.
DeGeneres’ acceptance speech for the Carol Burnett Award was filled with jokes and gags, like when she thanked her “husband Mark” and told her “kids,” Rupert and Fiona, to go to bed.
“The point is you all know me, and obviously you know me or else you wouldn’t have laughed at all that,” she said.
DeGeneres spoke about feeling like you know someone when they’re on TV, which is the relationship she had with Burnett as a child through “The Carol Burnett Show,” which the TV icon hosted from 1967 to 1978.
“We counted on her to make us feel good, and she delivered," DeGeneres said. “Every single week, she never let us down.”
“At the end of the show, every time she pulled her ear, I knew she was saying, ‘It’s OK. I’m gay, too.’”
DeGeneres got another laugh for that line, then offered her own example as a testimony to the influence of TV. She said she took little pieces of every talent she saw on TV, from Lucille Ball and Dick Van Dyke to Mary Tyler Moore, Marlo Thomas and Bob Newhart.
“All I ever want to do is make people feel good and laugh," she said. “There’s no greater feeling than when someone tells me that I’ve made their day better with my show, or that I’ve helped them get through a sickness or a hard time in their lives. But the real power of television for me is not that people watch my show, but people watch my show and then they’re inspired to go out and do the same thing in their own lives. They make people laugh or be kind or help someone that’s less fortunate than themselves. And that is the power of television. And I’m so, so grateful to be a part of it."
Have a tip? Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.
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