Ellen DeGeneres has outdone Oprah by surprising her audience with a gift of $1 million.
The host of The Ellen DeGeneres Show is still in celebration mode for her 60th birthday and has continued the party by giving away the biggest prize ever on her show.
Ellen, who reached the landmark age on 26 January (18), partnered with cereal brand Cheerios to celebrate her birthday with a two-day extravaganza, which included surprising the entire audience of people who participated in the talk show’s One Million Acts of Good campaign.
“Thanks to every single person in this audience, it is filled with goodness and we have reached one million acts of good because of all of you,” Ellen began as she addressed them in a clip from the show to be aired on Friday (02Feb18). “So, I wanna do something that we’ve never done before. Hold onto your Cheerios because all of you are splitting one million dollars! That’s a lot of money!”
According to editors at Just Jared, her average audience numbers 400, meaning each person may have pocketed $2,500.
Among the lucky recipients were a teacher who donated a kidney to a student’s mum, a couple who drove 800 miles to deliver supplies during Hurricane Harvey, and a man who quit his job to start a sanctuary for farm animals.
As well as giving out monetary gifts, the talk show host received birthday wishes from Justin Timberlake, flowers from Chance the Rapper, a sexy serenade from Dax Shepard and CVS goodies from Michelle Obama, a nod to the time Ellen took the former First Lady shopping at CVS.
Meanwhile the icing on the birthday cake came from wife Portia de Rossi who moved Ellen to tears on Thursday after she announced on the show that she has initiated the building of the Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund in Rwanda.
The campus will be the first initiative of The Ellen DeGeneres Wildlife Fund, a foundation Portia has set up in her wife’s name.
