Patrick Warburton says ‘spurned’ Ellen DeGeneres confronted him for not appearing on her sitcom
Ellen DeGeneres isn’t always in the laughing mood.
Patrick Warburton said that the comedian and former talk show host, 66, once confronted him in public after he turned down a guest role on her 1990s sitcom.
“I did a guest spot or two on ‘Ellen,'” Warburton, 59, said in a clip from SiriusXM’s “The Spotlight With Jessica Shaw” released Monday.
“They asked me to come back and do another one and I was just kind of done doing guest spots at that time, and it was sort of time to move on, and I just, you know, I said I had a conflict, all right?” he explained. “So, that was it.”
The “Seinfeld” actor continued: “Two weeks later I’m having lunch at a restaurant called Orso in Beverly Hills with a buddy of mine and Ellen walks up to the table and she goes, ‘Too big to do my show now, huh?'”
“And I go, ‘No, Ellen.’ I go, ‘I just had a conflict,’ which she probably sensed was just bulls – – t and she walked away,” he added.
Warburton said that after DeGeneres confronted him, he knew he was “never, ever” going to be invited onto her talk show, which aired from 2003 to 2022.
“She was spurned,” he said.
“It was just weird because, you know, when you say you have a conflict and you don’t do something, you seem like you’re gonna be fine with that,” Warburton went on. “You don’t expect the star of the show to walk up to you and call you out on your s – – t and that’s all it was.
“And then I always knew, it was like, ‘Oh, Ellen’s got a great show. It’s a lot of fun. I’ll never be on it.'”
However, Warburton made it clear that he’s “a huge Ellen fan.”
“What I recall working on that show was that, as far as crowd work and talking, she was just this remarkable comedian, you know, at the very, very top of the game,” he said. “She was as good as anybody.”
The Post has reached out to DeGeneres’ rep for comment.
Warburton appeared on three episodes of “Ellen” in 1995.
The ABC sitcom infamously featured an episode where DeGeneres’ character came out as a lesbian, which sparked a major backlash from advertisers and religious groups. DeGeneres herself revealed her sexuality on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
“When I came out, people warned me that it was going to ruin my career, and they were right for a while,” DeGeneres said on her talk show in April 2022 on the 25th anniversary of “The Puppy Episode.”
“Actually, for exactly three years, I lost my career. But look at me now.”
DeGeneres found success with “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” which became a staple on daytime television for almost 20 years.
The show ended with Season 19 in May 2022 following claims of a toxic workplace.
In 2020, current and former staffers spoke anonymously about their alleged experience working on the talk show for a BuzzFeed News report. DeGeneres apologized to staff at the time and producers Ed Glavin, Kevin Leman and Jonathan Norman exited the show.
“As we’ve grown exponentially, I’ve not been able to stay on top of everything and relied on others to do their jobs as they knew I’d want them done. Clearly some didn’t,” she wrote at the time in a memo, per the Hollywood Reporter. “That will now change and I’m committed to ensuring this does not happen again.”
Several celebrities — including DeGeneres’s wife, Portia de Rossi, and comedian Kevin Hart — came to her defense during the scandal.
But others, like “Everybody Loves Raymond” alum Brad Garrett and “Back to the Future” actress Lea Thompson, added fuel to the anti-Ellen fire.
