Ellen DeGeneres announces return to TV with new Discovery Channel show

Ellen DeGeneres is returning to TV with her new small screen project, ‘Saving the Gorillas: Ellen’s Next Adventure’, which will premiere on Discovery Channel on 23 September. Photo / AP

Ellen DeGeneres has announced her grand TV return.

The 65-year-old star’s eponymous ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’ came to a scandalous end in May 2022 after 19 seasons and she’s now revealed her latest small screen project, ‘Saving the Gorillas: Ellen’s Next Adventure’, which will premiere on Discovery Channel on 23 September.

The two-hour special will follow the comic as she travels to Rwanda to learn more about gorilla conservation efforts and build her own Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

A trailer for the show sees the veteran talk show host and her wife Portia de Rossi travel into the woods with a group of conservationists to observe a gorilla family.

The ‘Finding Dory’ star says in a voiceover: “Nothing keeps you more present than sitting with gorillas.”

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The footage then cuts to the group grabbing each others’ hands as a gorilla kisses its child on the head and another voice says: “There’s nothing more special in the world than seeing an exchange of love.”

According to the Discovery Channel, establishing the Ellen DeGeneres Campus came from de Rossi’s hunt to find a “nice birthday gift for her wife”, leading to the couple setting out on “one of the largest architectural and landscaping projects in the history of Rwanda.”

The documentary chronicles the problems DeGeneres and her team encountered along the way, including volcano eruptions, earthquakes, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

An announcement for the show said: “It all culminates in a once-in-a-lifetime experience for them, their family, and friends as they celebrate the opening of The Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

“It is an adventure filled with laughter, tears, and experiences none of them ever dreamed they’d have.”

Referring to Dian Fossey, the celebrated primatologist who wrote ‘Gorillas in the Mist’, DeGeneres said in a statement: “Every single thing has led me to just have a big enough platform to say, ‘Look at work Dian Fossey did.’”

The Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund opened in February 2022 and has so far hosted over 40,000 visitors, including over 7500 local school children, which has provided them with “the opportunity to learn more about the biodiversity in their backyard and have hands-on experiences in nature.”