Ellen DeGeneres is a woman of many talents. She dances, she never misses a comedic beat, and she’s also pretty damn good at her job.
Today, however, she proved there’s one skill she’s lacking and we have celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis to thank for exposing that.
In a cooking segment on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, the host welcomed De Laurentiis and Nicole Kidman into an on-set kitchen and things were hilariously rocky from the start.
After De Laurentiis instructed DeGeneres to spoon a risotto mixture into her hand with an ice cream scoop and roll it into a ball, the host stood there, with a perplexed expression. A face with that seemed to quietly beg the question, "What are balls?”
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“No.. no you roll this with your hand,” De Laurentiis said, growing impatient. “In my hand?” DeGeneres said, confused.
“Well you know...you roll it...ya know...you’ve never made any kind of...balls before?” De Laurentiis said, slightly annoyed.
“No. I’m not…It’s...” said a flush-faced Ellen, trailing off as she glanced at the camera, grinning and shaking her head.
“This is a family-friendly show,” Kidman chimed in.
Ball jokes aside, De Laurentiis soldiered on with Kidman churning out A-plus balls, while an adorable DeGeneres fell flat. "That looks like dog food,” said De Laurentiis upon inspecting the work of her troubled pupil.
You can almost see the wave of “Eff this” wash over DeGeneres’s face as she later decides to just let the chef do the cooking while samples the finished product. Despite Kidman’s knack for rolling out the perfect balls, she too looked a bit over it, though it was clearly all in good fun. Moments after launching into another segment involving pizza dough the host got a hand signal from producer Andy, who’s seated off camera, to move things along. Could this get anymore awkward?
Yes, it did. The segment only got better, with the host confusing the word anise — as in anise seeds — with the word anus. Oh, Ellen, you’re a national treasure.