Greyson Chance Said He Was “Completely Abandoned” by Ellen DeGeneres

Former Ellen DeGeneres protégé Greyson Chance revealed that the former talk show host dropped him after his 2012 debut EP, Truth Be Told Part 1, underperformed.

Chance first caught attention at 12 when a video of him singing Lady Gaga’s 2009 hit “Paparazzi” at school went viral. After he appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the host gifted him a $10,000 piano and signed him to her eleveneleven label that year. 

In a recent interview, Chance, now 25, said DeGeneres ”became domineering and way too controlling” once he was on her label and that she made all the decisions for him. 

“She would come in and look at a rack, yell at stylists, berate people in front of me and say, ‘This is what you’re wearing on the show,’” shared Chance. “She was just degrading to people.”

He added, ”I’ve never met someone more manipulative, more self-centered, and more blatantly opportunistic than her.”

When Truth Be Told Part 1 didn’t do as well as expected, Greyson said he was dropped from the label, and also lost managers, publicists, and agents that Ellen had provided to him. Chance said that DeGeneres “completely abandoned” him at that point and would not return his phone calls.

A source close to DeGeneres said, “Ellen and the team went above and beyond and sometimes careers just don’t take off.” They added that Chance “did not make any complaints” during the time that he worked with DeGeneres and continued to appear on the show through 2019. 

Following the release of his EP, Chance still appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show two more times, including a performance in 2015, when he said the two never spoke backstage, and his final appearance in 2019, just two years after he came out as gay in an Instagram post. Chance said that during this appearance, DeGeneres acted as if nothing had happened between them. 

“She had nothing to do with that,” said Chance. “[When I came out], I hadn’t spoken to her in years. That’s so messed up, that you’re now showing the world as if we’re so tight—we’re so good—and behind the scenes, you are this insanely manipulative person.”

Though Chance was invited back to perform on the show before it ended in May 2022, he turned the offer down.

“How in the world am I supposed to sit down and say I’m so thankful and let her take that moment?” said Chance. “I couldn’t do that. So I turned down a national TV gig on the eve of an album release, which is probably not a smart thing to do, but I had to do it for my integrity.”

Chance recently released his third album Palladium, a follow-up to Portraits in 2019, and features the title track and singles “Athena” and “My Dying Spirit.”

Photo: Broderick Baumann / 42West PR