My chat with Ellen’s mom – Betty DeGeneres!

Betty DeGeneres knows where she is going to be just about every weekday.

The 84-year-old mother of Ellen DeGeneres is on the Warner Bros lot in Burbank watching her daughter tape her wildly popular daytime talk show.

‘I watch it every day. I go to the show and the next day I’ll watch the show that I was at,’ she told me at the Human Rights Campaign Dinner in Los Angeles over the weekend.

‘I don’t miss it. Are you kidding? And then when it’s reruns all summer I’ll watch that too.’

But she is rarely a part of the onscreen action. Instead, she is in her special seat near the front and over on the side.

‘They don’t show me unless they really want to,’ she said. ‘I’m always surprised when they do.’

Her daughter has major guests so much of the time including First Lady Michelle Obama and Madonna this week alone.

But that’s not what makes the mother most proud.

‘What’s amazing is the audience reaction every day when she comes out,’ she says. ‘They just cheer like crazy. You’d think I’d get used to it but they just really love her.’

While her daughter was popular with TV viewers when she had her own ABC sitcom in the second half of the 90s, it’s as herself in the talk show format where her appeal has reached the stratosphere.

Betty DeGeneres thinks she knows why.

‘I think it’s because she’s natural and they know that what they see up there, that that’s who she is. She’s not putting on an act.’

Ellen’s mom is the author of two books: Love, Ellen: A Mother Daughter Journey and Just a Mom and is a passionate advocate for LGBTI rights.