Ellen DeGeneres’ friendship with Oprah Winfrey dates back decades. In 1997, DeGeneres starred in the ABC sitcom, “Ellen.” The show also served as a vehicle for her own coming out story with the famous “The Puppy Episode,” which made history as the first time a lead television character came out as a lesbian, according to ET. Winfrey — who at the time was at the height of her talk show heyday — appeared as a guest star in the episode, playing a therapist as DeGeneres’ character, Ellen Morgan, admitted she was gay for the first time. Executive producer Dava Savel told Vanity Fair that Winfrey became very emotional as she replayed the scenes after filming. “She started to cry,” Savel said of Winfrey. “The tears just flowed down her cheeks, and she said, ‘I’m so proud to be a part of this. I’m so proud.'”
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Twenty years later, Winfrey reunited with DeGeneres to discuss the fallout from the groundbreaking episode. Winfrey revealed that she received hate mail after appearing in “The Puppy Episode,” but she had no regrets. “I just said yes, because I so believed in your truth, and I so wanted to support you,” she said on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” in 2017.
