Ellen DeGeneres says she "don't know nothin'," but that's not entirely true.
After all, in Sunday's episode of Oprah's Master Class on OWN, the comedienne and daytime talk show host shares some of the life lessons she's learned in her 57 years. Long before she became a household name, a 20-something DeGeneres was struggling to make ends meet in New Orleans. The young comic painted houses, waited tables, bartended and sold vacuum cleaners to pay the bills. One night at a fundraiser, friends encouraged her to get onstage and "do something funny."
"I brought a Whopper, fries and a shake and I went onstage and I said, 'This is my first time being on stage, and I have to admit I'm a little nervous. I didn't know what I was going to say, and I realized I hadn't eaten all day, so I hope you don't mind, I stopped and grabbed something to eat on the way.' Then I would say, 'But what I wanted to talk about was...' and then I would take a bite," DeGeneres says of her first stand-up gig. "While I was chewing, I'd put a finger up and then just go, 'Oh, that is good. That's better.' And then I would start the sentence again."
When her set ended, DeGeneres had finished her entire meal but hadn't finished a sentence. The audience loved her, and she was later invited to perform at a coffeehouse, since there was no comedy club in New Orleans at the time. Looking back, DeGeneres jokes, "People enjoyed me eating onstage and not talking."
DeGeneres knew the shtick would get old quick.
"I had to come up with something else. I couldn't eat every time. So, then I played a song on piano that I said I wrote when I was in the hospital, and it was just me screaming and hitting some chords. I would say things like, 'I just want to try some new material,' and I would hold up a piece of fabric and I would just show it to the audience," she says. "That's what I did for the first few times onstage. I just did stupid things because I just didn't take it seriously."
DeGeneres took it more seriously as time went on, and in the '90s, she became the star of her own sitcom, Ellen, as well as a film star and stand-up comedian. In 1997, DeGeneres announced she was gay (around the same time that her TV character came out as gay). "I didn't ever that I was going to come out. Period," she admits. "I didn't think I'd be coming out on a show, ever."
A course she took at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, Calif., called Changing the Inner Dialogue of Your Subconscious Mind, gave DeGeneres clarity. "I wanted to know what the inner dialogue of my subconscious mind was, and it was scary and crazy," she says. "What came out of listening to what I had been saying to myself is, 'Would I still be famous? Would they still love me if they knew I was gay?' And my fear was, 'No, they wouldn't.' Then it made me feel shame that I was hiding something. It made me feel shame that I couldn't be honest and who I am. I just didn't want to pretend to be somebody else anymore so that people would like me."
Though the sitcom was canceled and her stand-up career stalled before she would see her career reach new heights with a role in Disney-Pixar's Finding Nemo and an eponymous talk show, DeGeneres says she learned a lot about herself as a result of the backlash. "The one thing that I keep learning over and over again is that I don't know nothin'. I mean, that's my life lesson. As soon as I think I know something, I realize that I got so much more to learn," she explains. "It's hard to hold on to everything that I've learned that I think is important, but I think the most important thing is compassion. I've learned that obviously from some tough times, because it gives you compassion. You understand what it feels like to be on the end of hurt."
Oprah's Master Class with Ellen DeGeneres airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on OWN.