Ellen DeGeneres considering bringing her talk show to an end: Here's what she's saying

Ellen DeGeneres considered ending her eponymous daytime talk show recently at the encouragement of her wife, Portia de Rossi.

DeGeneres, 60, who has been on television for over two decades, opened up to the New York Times in an illuminating profile, during which she ruminates on what her life would look like if she decided to call it quits on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show."

Before deciding to extend her contract through the summer of 2020 recently, DeGeneres was "close to declining" the offer. As the Times explains, DeGeneres is a bit caught in the middle when it comes to making a decision about the future of the show -- her brother, Vance, thinks that her positive voice is needed in these uncertain times, while de Rossi thinks that she doesn't need the show anymore.

"She gets mad when my brother tells me I can't stop," DeGeneres said.

"I just think she's such a brilliant actress and standup that it doesn't have to be this talk show for her creativity. There are other things she could tackle," de Rossi explained. "I don't see the end of her show as a career ending."

"She's just a bit more complicated than she appears on the show," she added at another point in the interview. "There's more range of emotion."

It's an assessment that DeGeneres agrees -- and grapples -- with regularly. She's taken on other projects over the years, like "Finding Nemo" and its sequel "Finding Dory," and her upcoming Netflix standup special, "Relatable," her first in a decade and a half, in an effort to display every facet of her talents.

This has become especially important to her as aspects of her talk show become grating to her -- she quietly stopped dancing on her show two years ago -- and admitted in the interview that she's "playing a character of a talk show host" on the show.

"There's a tiny, tiny bit of difference," she said of how she compares to that so-called "character."

So, though "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" will continue to provide viral moments that allow us to escape the troubling news cycle for at least another year and a half, it won't come as a surprise if, come the fall of 2020, it will have come to an end.