It Ends With Us: Why was the Ellen Degeneres storyline cut from the film?

One of the key storylines in Lily’s past wasn’t mentioned in the film at all

3 months ago

Readers of the It Ends With Us novel may have been shocked to find out that the recent film adaptation of their favourite book left out a huge storyline from Lily’s childhood: The Ellen Degeneres diary entries.

For those unfamiliar with the plot, Colleen Hoover spun her into Lily’s childhood as a sort of comfort TV show she would watch after school, and who she would address her diary entries to. Ellen unknowingly became a rock for Lily during her difficult childhood with a violent father in the house.

via YouTube

But why was she cut from the entire film, even the flashbacks? Well, a lot of her related plot lines were cut too, such as Ryle finding Lily’s diary entries addressed to Ellen all about Atlas (which is instead replaced with Ryle finding Atlas’s phone number in the back of her phone case), and the reason behind Emerson’s middle name being Dory which wasn’t referenced at all.

Screenwriter and producer Christy Hall has spoken about the decision to leave Ellen out of the It Ends With Us movie, and agrees that it was a difficult choice to make: “That was a big piece of the heartbeat of the book, so we wanted to acknowledge it. But for me, personally – I can only speak for myself – I just really wanted to use the precious real estate we had to keep our focus on the core characters.”

via YouTube

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Hall also mentioned that the decision to cut the Ellen storyline was not influenced by the allegations that surrounded The Ellen Show in 2020, in which former employees claimed they had experienced intimidation and hostility on set.

“I don’t feel like that was ever discussed if I think back on it. Our primary goal was to honour this beautiful thing that Colleen Hoover has created and manifested in the world, and so it just felt important that whatever was happening in the outside world and swirling around us, our north star was always this cherished novel.

“Instead of Lily spending 30 seconds talking about Ellen, I wanted to spend those 30 seconds of her talking to Atlas.” I can’t argue with her here – I was obsessed with Lily and Atlas content. And at the sake of missing the Ellen references, I didn’t mind one bit.