Did Ellen DeGeneres Steal This Conan O’Brien Joke for Her New Netflix Special?

Ellen DeGeneres’ very bad, no-good week just keeps getting worse. Late last night, Redditor The_DavinciChode took to the Conan O’Brien subreddit to point out the startling similarities between one of Conan’s old punchlines and a “new” joke delivered by DeGeneres on her much-maligned For Your Approval Netflix special. 

Did Ellen actually swipe the gag? You make the call.

First up, Conan, who delivered this bit on his Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast. “When I replaced Letterman, it was train wreck for a while. I remember saying to my therapist, ‘Everyone hates me and wants me to go away,’ and he said that’s just a feeling. And I said, ‘No it’s the cover of USA Today.”

Compare that to DeGeneres’ joke in her new special: “I was in therapy dealing with all the hate. My therapist said, ‘Where do you get this idea that everyone hates you?’ I said, ‘New York Times, Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly.’”

Hmmmm. While DeGeneres’ bit isn’t a word-for-word swipe, there’s no doubt that both comics use essentially the same setup and the same punchline. 

When I first saw the post, I scratched my chin and thought, “Well, the jokes are substantially similar, but it could be chalked up to parallel thinking.” But then I saw the comic to whom Conan delivered the original joke — Ellen Degeneres, on a 2019 episode of his podcast — and that benefit of the doubt went out the window. 

Reddit, as Reddit does, piled on. “Those jokes aren’t wildly similar,” posted user UniqueCartel. “They are exactly the same.”

“To be fair, she made it her own,” added tcmasteron. “By making it worse.”

“She also stole Conan’s ‘harass and denigrate your employees’ schtick except she did it unironically,” wrote loudrain99.

“George Harrison lost lawsuits with less evidence than this,” noted kkeut.

Could it all have been an honest mistake? 

“The mistake,” wrote betterbub, “was watching Ellen’s special in the first place.”