Patrick Warburton Says He Had a Run-In With Ellen DeGeneres After He Declined to Do a Cameo on Her Sitcom

Patrick Warburton is recalling his weird and awkward run-in with Ellen DeGeneres after he turned down a guest starring role on her 1990s sitcom.

The Rules of Engagement and Seinfeld star appeared on SiriusXM’s The Spotlight with Jessica Shaw and recalled making a few guest-starring appearances on Ellen, which aired five seasons across 109 episodes from 1994 to 1998. Warburton appeared on three episodes in 1995.

“They say you’re the flavor of the month, so they keep asking you like, ‘They want you on this show, they want you on this show,’ so I did a guest spot or two, you know, on Ellen,” Warburton recalled. “And then they asked me to come back and do another one and I was just kind of done doing guest spots at that time and it was sort of time to move on and I just said I had a conflict, all right? So, that was it.”

Except, it wasn’t.

Two weeks later, Warburton said he was having lunch in Beverly Hills with a friend when, out of nowhere, DeGeneres walked up to his table.

“And Ellen walks up to the table and she goes, ‘Too big to do my show now, huh?’ and I go, ‘No, Ellen.’ I go, ‘I just had a conflict,’ which she probably sensed was just bulls**t and she walked away,” Warburton recalled. “And so, it was just interesting, but just sort of knowing her, I realized at that point on there was a reason why I was never ever gonna be invited on her talk show.”

DeGeneres’ eponymous talk show began airing in 2003 and aired for 19 seasons before it came to an end in 2022 amid allegations of a toxic workplace environment.

“Yeah. She was spurn. I want you to know I’m a huge fan. What I recall working on that show was that, as far as crowd work and talking, she was just this remarkable comedian, you know, at the very, very top of the game,” Warburton shared. “She was as good as anybody, but it was just weird. It was just weird because when you say you have a conflict and you don’t do something, you seem like you’re gonna be fine with that. You don’t expect the damn star of the show to walk up to you and call you out on your s**t.”

He added, “And then I always knew, ‘Oh, Ellen’s got a great show. It’s a lot of fun. I’ll never be on it. I’ll never be on it.'”

Warburton’s recollection comes amid DeGeneres saying this month during the filming of her Netflix special that “this is the last time you’re going to see me.”

The revelation came just before DeGeneres abruptly canceled a number of tour dates, with no reason given for the cancellations.

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