The Ellen DeGeneres Show’s house DJ, Stephen “tWitch” Boss, is addressing the current controversy regarding allegations about the “toxic” work environment at the popular daily talk show.
Boss has been the DJ at the show since 2014, taking over for Tony Okungbowa. In an interview on Tuesday with Us Weekly, 37-year-old Boss defended his own experience at the show, stressing that there was “love.”
“We can’t speak too much legally about it, but I’ll say this, there’s been love,” he said. “Obviously there’s some things to address, but from my standpoint and from countless others, there’s been love. I’ll just leave it at that until there’s a time where we can address more publicly. There’s been love and there will continue to be love.”
360aproko spoke to Boss in June, when he had nothing but great things to say about DeGeneres.
“Ellen is obviously, like, you know, she promotes kindness but she is quite literally kind,” he said. “Incredibly generous, but also like, still down — and I’m not saying down-to-earth like the cliché, ‘Oh, she’s so, like, grounded.’ No, but as in a real person, like, when the cameras go off and things like that.”
Boss said he’d recently been able to talk to her on the phone and through text.
“She’s cried, expressed like, you know, her confusion, her anger, you know, things like that,” he shared. “It’s just, like, I think a lot of people get kinda caught up in just only what they see on the TV and the billboard and think that she’s not a real person. And she totally is, and I think that’s also why she resonates the way that she does for so long, and there’s something genuine there that actually connects on a human level, even though you’re looking at her from a screen.”
“She’s up in a high place and people love to take cracks when they got time, but it’s just like, I don’t say nothin’ to them,” he also said about those questioning her character. “I know my experiences. I have personally seen all the love she puts in the world, so, it’s just like, people just got time, you know? People got time.”
His comments are different from Okungbowa’s, who said he did experience a toxic environment during his time working on the show from 2003-2006 and from 2007-2013, in an Instagram post earlier this month.
“While I am grateful for the opportunity it afforded me, I did experience and feel the toxicity of the environment and I stand with my former colleagues in their quest to create a healthier and more inclusive workplace as the show moves forward,” he wrote alongside a picture of himself DJ’ing on the show.
As 360aproko previously reported, Warner Bros. Television sent an internal memo to staffers last month, informing them that WarnerMedia would be seeking the services of an independent third-party firm to interview current and former employees about their experiences behind the scenes on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, after one current and 10 former employees anonymously spoke with BuzzFeed News about their negative experiences working on the program.
In an internal letter sent to show staff, which was obtained by 360aproko, DeGeneres apologized and affirmed that she was committed to “having conversations about fairness and justice.”
360aproko learned that a virtual staff meeting was also recently held to update show employees on the investigation into alleged workplace misconduct. 360aproko was told that there are staff who feel hopeful there will be positive change on the production side of the show and more involvement from DeGeneres herself. New episodes of The Ellen DeGeneres Show are slated to begin filming in September.
Meanwhile, in a recent video obtained by Page Six, DeGeneres’ wife, Portia de Rossi, was asked by a photographer how the 62-year-old comedian was doing amid the controversy. De Rossi responded that DeGeneres was “doing great,” and said that she would be continuing her talk show.
