On the latest installment of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the eponymous host reacted to her friend Jason Sudeikis‘ SNL sketch spoofing her, called Mellen.
The conceit of the skit was that with more men sitting at home during the pandemic, network executives “took 10 seconds” to come up with a male-skewing alternative for DeGeneres’ long-running program.
The result of the execs’ poor planning was dressing Sudeikis like Ellen, dubbing him Mellen, and ripping off her show. “All the fun daytime energy of Ellen with a hard, masculine edge,” according to the SNL sketch.
The result is an admittedly poorly thought-out combination of vests, “awkward male dancing,” and fistfights in the audience. “Ellen’s lawyers called the series, ‘cease and desist,'” the sketch says.
On her show, the real Ellen explained she was surprised by the sketch, when she and wife Portia de Rossi were watching SNL “as we do every week.” She screened the SNL version for her own audience, and then admitted with a laugh, “I would actually watch that show.”
She then called out Sudeikis, saying, “Jason, when you’re ending Ted Lasso, we should do that show.”
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
