The Shadiest Talk Show Moments of 2021: Ellen Drama, Intrusive Questions, and Leno vs. Conan

Perhaps the shadiest moment of talk shows in 2021 was Kimmel’s send off to the beloved Conan O’Brien as he made his way to HBO. In his opening monologue, Kimmel blasted Leno and NBC for fumbling the play as Conan was introduced to NBC way back in 2004. Conan was set to take over for The Tonight Show, his ratings tanked, and instead of helping him back up, NBC tossed the gig to Leno behind his back.

“We look forward to whatever you have planned next at HBO Max,” Kimmel celebrated Conan as he ended his gig at TBS, continuing, “And I also want to say, congratulations to Jay Leno on his new time slot at TBS.”

Woof! We know what side he’s on.

We know this one all too well. Taylor Swift visited Seth Meyers to promote the rerelease of her album, Red (Taylor’s Version). While she didn’t address ex Jake Gyllenhaal by name, per se, she did lay into him with a stunning roast. She briefly alluded to him when Meyers asked her if the album’s re-release might be “far, far worse” for people who may have inspired it.

“I haven’t thought about their experience once,” she replied, as the audience erupted in cheers. In Meyers’ words: “That’s the biggest burn.”

Meghan McCain departed The View earlier this year, and after all the tense arguments, plenty of the panel was ready to blow off some steam. The loudest has been Joy Behar. Back in September, Behar had some choice words about her former co-host while chatting with guest Reese Witherspoon.

“I think people are kind of excited to peek behind the curtain of these morning shows like you guys do,” Witherspoon said, promoting her series The Morning Show. “I’m sure people are always asking you what it’s really like… Do people get along, do people like each other? That’s people’s main question.”

And Behar had a quick response: “Well, right now, yeah,” she interjected. She’s since gone on to agree with Abby Huntsman about McCain’s difficulty, saying that the panel is “perfect now.” That’s that.

There were a handful of GREAT roasts tossed around in this interview, in which Jimmy Kimmel completely destroyed MyPillow’s Mike Lindell — so many that we can’t catalogue them all here. In summary? Kimmel should host a roast of all of Trump’s allies.

“Do you ever think it’s weird, I mean just objectively looking at yourself and going, ‘Why is it that the only person in the country who has this evidence is a guy who sells pillows on cable?’” he asked of the election fraud claims.

Seriously, do yourself a favor and click the link above. Kimmel went to town!

But Kimmel does have his shortcomings, and one came while he was interviewing Michelle Obama. Some celebs have sex lives worth knowing about, others — like, for example, The Obamas — shouldn’t really touch the public sphere. Nevertheless, Kimmel poked into the former FLOTUS’ bedroom behaviors.

“On the night that SEAL Team Six took out Osama Bin Laden at your husband’s order, did you and your husband make love that night to celebrate?” Kimmel prodded.

Obama wasn’t having it. She simply rolled her eyes before telling the audience that the host is, “for some very sick reason,” completely “obsessed with this portion of that major historical event.”

In a bit titled “Addison Rae Teaches Jimmy 8 TikTok Dances,” both Jimmy Fallon and Addison Rae went under fire for “stealing from Black entertainers.” Folks hailing from TikTok were incredibly upset with Rae for stealing dance moves from Black creators, and even more infuriated by the platform Fallon had offered her. The creators of the eight dance moves spoke up on social media, eventually resulting in apologies from Rae.

“It’s kinda hard to credit [them] during the show,” Rae told TMZ when they caught her walking down the street in an ambush style interview. “But they all know that I love them so much and I support all of them so much and hopefully one day we can all meet up and dance together.”

Eventually, Fallon made his apology by inviting the original dance creators onto his show.

While chatting about her kind neighbors the Kimmels, Dakota Johnson had a fun moment with host Drew Barrymore about that, “Actually, no, that’s not the truth, Ellen, you were invited,” moment back in 2019.

“They’re amazing neighbors,” Johnson said, praising the Jimmy Kimmel and co. “Except they have a lot of parties and they don’t invite me.”

“Is this for real?” Barrymore shot back. “You know, because people have gotten in trouble for claiming not being invited to your parties.” After some intense silence as Johnson struggled out a laugh, Barrymore cut the tension: “That was amazing, by the way. Like, amazing.” Thankfully, the audience was overjoyed, applauding Johnson’s noble effort to stand up to DeGeneres. Take that!

The talk show world said farewell to two blonde divas this year, Meghan McCain and Ellen DeGeneres. DeGeneres’ show is still running, but after a slew of toxic workplace allegations, she’s set to step down in 2022. In her place will be Kelly Clarkson’s talk show. DeGeneres insists she’s not ending her show because of the workplace scandal.

“It’s not why I’m stopping but it was hard because I was sitting at home, it was summer, and I see a story that people have to chew gum before they talk to me and I’m like, ‘Okay, this is hilarious.’ Then I see another story of some other ridiculous thing and then it just didn’t stop,” DeGeneres said. “And I wasn’t working, so I had no platform, and I didn’t want to address it on [Twitter] and I thought if I just don’t address it, it’s going to go away because it was all so stupid.”

Sure, Ellen.

James Corden went under fire for a racist segment on his late night show earlier this year. In the segment, he and his guests attempt to eat “gross” foods like cow blood and bird brain. When TikTok users called him out for making ethnic foods seem disgusting, he quickly altered the segment.

“We heard that story, and the next time we do that bit we absolutely won’t involve or use any of those foods,” Corden said, per Deadline. “As you said at the start, our show is a show about joy and light and love, we don’t want to make a show to upset anybody.”

Maybe Corden should force people to watch his musicals to gross them out instead.

After Bill Maher tried to make a joke about Lift Every Voice on Real Time, The View‘s Whoopi Goldberg shut him down on her own show: “We’re having to reeducate people on how everyone wants to be talked about. These were all things that I thought we’d worked on together,” she said. “Just so you know, Bill, Lift Every Voice has always been considered the Black anthem. Maybe other people don’t know that.”

Maher, not going down without a fight, attempted to fire back at Goldberg, who said his bit was “not funny!” He went on a whole tangent, for some reason, about the Black national anthem — as a white man.

“Yes, America was born from the original sin of slavery, and redress for that is certainly still in order. But not at the cost of destroying a country that most Black people now have found a decent life in, with a relatively high standard of living and don’t want to lose. And Balkanizing our nation will certainly cause us to lose it,” Maher said as a part of his rant. “We need to stop regarding this new woke segregation as if it’s some sort of cultural advancement. It’s not. Ask Yugoslavia.”