Quentin Tarantino and Ellen DeGeneres had an awkward moment on Graham Norton’s couch on Friday (16 November), when the filmmaker called out the comedian for never inviting him on her former chat show.
After DeGeneres and fellow guest Colin Farrell reminisced on the many, many times that the Irish actor had appeared on DeGeneres’s eponymous talk show, Tarantino was asked by Norton if he’d ever made an appearance.
“I was never asked,” Tarantino said.
“I don’t know why that is,” DeGeneres replied.
Tarantino added that he “didn’t mean it like that”, but that he’d “always been kind of hoping to be on your show”.
DeGeneres suggested that “there are producers that bring you people” when you host a chat show, but that she doesn’t know why Tarantino was apparently never invited.
“Well, I’m so glad we’re meeting now,” she added. “I don’t know why you wouldn’t have been.”
Jokingly, DeGeneres added: “Let’s look into this. Now I’m angry.”
On X, some viewers dubbed the interaction eerily similar to a notorious encounter between DeGeneres and the actor Dakota Johnson in a November 2019 episode of DeGeneres’s chat show. In it, DeGeneres claimed that she had not been invited to Johnson’s recent birthday party, only for Johnson to tell her, “that’s not the truth, Ellen”, and that it was DeGeneres who had appeared to snub a sent invitation.
The moment immediately went viral, immortalising itself as a go-to internet meme, and – in the wake of allegations in 2020 that DeGeneres had presided over a “toxic work environment” on her show – was argued to be a pivotal moment in DeGeneres’s reputational decline. DeGeneres’s show ran for 19 seasons before ending in 2022.
After initial claims of workplace misconduct at the Ellen show were reported by Buzzfeed in 2021, WarnerMedia launched an investigation into the allegations. The investigation resulted in the removal of three of the series’ producers, and DeGeneres issued an apology to former staff. Discussing the scandal in 2021, DeGeneres expressed confusion about the entire thing.
“I really didn’t understand it,” she told the Today show in the US. “I still don’t understand it. It was too orchestrated. It was too coordinated. You know, people get picked on, but for four months straight for me. And then for me to read in the press about a ‘toxic work environment’? When all I’ve ever heard from every guest that comes on the show is what a happy atmosphere this is and what a happy place this is?”
In 2024, DeGeneres announced that she planned to retire from the spotlight after the completion of what she dubbed her final stand-up tour, titled Ellen’s Last Stand… Up.
However, DeGeneres – who was unusually not promoting a project during her appearance on The Graham Norton Show – told the host that now she actually missed working in television, and would like to work in Britain, which she has called home since 2024.
“I’ve nothing really going on and I really miss being on TV,” she said. “I miss a lot about it – laughing with the writers and the audience. I think about doing stuff here.”
She jokingly added: “I think it is pretty easy to get on TV here – you have a pottery show, you have a sewing show, and you even have a show about people watching TV shows!”
This clip of Ellen DeGeneres being quizzed about why Quentin Tarantino wasn’t invited on her show is giving the Dakota Johnson saga part 2 #TheGrahamNortonShow pic.twitter.com/KK3ZOxvoVa
— samm (@sxmstele) October 16, 2026
DeGeneres and her wife, the former actor Portia de Rossi, decided to make their Cotswolds home their permanent base in the wake of Donald Trump’s re-election in 2024.
“We got here the day before the election and woke up to lots of texts from our friends with crying emojis, and I was like, ‘He got in’,” she has said. “And we’re like, ‘We’re staying here’.”
Earlier this year she told broadcaster Richard Bacon about all the things she and De Rossi love about the UK.
“It’s absolutely beautiful,” she said. “We’re just not used to seeing this kind of beauty. The villages and the towns and the architecture – everything you see is charming and it’s just a simpler way of life. It’s clean. Everything here is just better – the way animals are treated, people are polite. I just love it here.”
Read MoreEllen DeGeneres hints at TV comeback in the UK
The village from Graham Norton's reality TV show could be yours for £7.5m
Quentin Tarantino’s West End debut casts Oscar-nominated star in lead role
Michael Palin says he may never travel abroad again after pulling out of tour
Judi Dench says The Crown creator was ‘disappointed’ over her remarks about series
Celebrity Traitors viewing figures released after Joe Lycett banished
