She has to be the only 60-year-old woman in America who is expected to dance with total strangers wherever she goes. “There’s been times someone wants a picture, and while I’m doing a selfie, they’re like: ‘You’re not dancing!,’” DeGeneres said in her office on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, California. “Of course I’m not dancing. I’m walking down the street.”

As she prepares to release her first comedy special in 15 years, DeGeneres is considering a much bigger change, retiring from the long-running hit show that bears her name. She’s been receiving conflicting advice from her wife, the actress Portia de Rossi, and from her older brother, Vance DeGeneres, a comedian, and has changed her mind more than once.

At a transitional moment in her remarkable career, DeGeneres agreed to sit for a rare series of interviews over two days. As much as anyone possibly could, she has taken on Oprah Winfrey’s mantle as the queen of inspirational daytime talk, providing an oasis of positivity and escapist comedy in a culture short on both. But with DeGeneres’s status as a sunny stalwart come certain burdens and constrictions, like the expectation to dance, which she finally stopped doing on her show two years ago, after some agonising over how her audience would react.

In person, she is more blunt, introspective and interesting than she is on the show, willing to express mild irritation that might seem off-key in front of a national audience. She’s also much more likely to explore dark corners of her psyche, regrets, second thoughts, anxieties that linger.

Spoofing her own approachable, down-to-earth image, her surprising new special, Relatable (available December 18 on Netflix), doesn’t just reveal a refreshingly irreverent version of Ellen DeGeneres. It also provides a window into her state of mind.

Asked why his sister returned to stand-up, Vance DeGeneres, a former correspondent for The Daily Show who helped create the Mr. Bill shorts for Saturday Night Live, said: “After doing the show for 16 years, it’s second nature. She wanted to break out of, not a rut, but a mould.”

DeGeneres put it another way, emphasising the kind of expression stand-up allows. “I wanted to show all of me,” she said. “The talk show is me, but I’m also playing a character of a talk-show host. There’s a tiny, tiny bit of difference.”

Because daytime talk shows get less attention than their late-night counterparts, DeGeneres is often overlooked in discussions of important hosts. But make no mistake: No other current daily host has been as successful or celebrated. Among her vast collection of awards are the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humour and 32 Emmys. Years before Jimmy Fallon turned games into standard elements of The Tonight Show, DeGeneres regularly invited guests to play them.

I think comedy is the best medicine

The next morning, DeGeneres, sat staring — without her make-up on, she still looks a decade younger, her alert blue eyes her most distinguishing feature — at the ocean from her beach house outside Los Angeles in Carpinteria, where you can see dolphins leaping from the water. George Lucas lives two doors over, and Conan O’Brien is down the way, as are Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis. She has a farm nearby and a place in the city, but she seems to prefer this tranquil spot, where she walks her dogs and chats with neighbours. “It’s the most community I have ever felt,” she said.

As her private chef dropped off a drink, she explained that she spent a year struggling to come up with a subject to make comedy about. Her breakthrough, she explained, came when she developed a bit about whether she was still relatable, which, considering the extravagant surroundings, does sound like a joke. But it is a subject DeGeneres understands in a personal, idiosyncratic way. “It was interesting to me that I was more relatable when I was closeted and dishonest than when I came out,” she said.

When she came out of the closet in 1997, the first out lesbian lead of her own sitcom, Ellen, she became a huge star, on the cover of Time, accompanied by the headline “Yep, I’m Gay.” But what’s remembered less is what happened next. ABC put a parental advisory warning on the show and cancelled it the next season. According to DeGeneres, her straight audience left her and she received wounding criticism from gay viewers for not being political enough. She sank into a depression.

And yet, while DeGeneres has a spikier, more confessional style in her new special, this is more of a recalibration than a reinvention. Her vision of comedy is old school, too. She said that she loved Nanette by Hannah Gadsby, who stopped by Largo, in Los Angeles, to see DeGeneres work out material for her special, but described Gadsby’s celebrated special as less stand-up than solo show. She also disagreed with Gadsby’s biting critique of the art form, saying, “I think comedy is the best medicine.”

Before DeGeneres stumbled into stand-up, really honing her craft at a comedy club in New Orleans, she had little idea what career she would pursue.

Of the few memories she recalls from her youth, many are of feeling out of place or bottled up, in part because of her upbringing as a Christian Scientist. She recalls the other kids’ being given shots, but her parents barred her from getting them or taking aspirin. With glassy eyes, she described her father, an insurance salesman who died in January, as kind and cautious, someone who wanted above all else for things to be harmonious. “He was a very fearful man,” she said. “He couldn’t hear or engage with anything not pleasant.” DeGeneres stays off social media and entirely avoids the news.

When she came out of the closet in 1997, she became a huge star on the cover of Time, accompanied by the headline “Yep, I’m Gay.” According to DeGeneres, her straight audience left her and she received wounding criticism from gay viewers for not being political enough

Ellen DeGeneres

My biggest fear

As she spoke, she glanced at her phone on the kitchen counter, made a call and immediately tensed up. “What do you mean?” she asked urgently. “Is anything broken? Baby!” She put the phone down and explained that de Rossi had been riding, fell off her horse during a jump and sustained a concussion. She was taken to the hospital and was now heading to the beach house.

“This is my biggest fear,” she said, sounding shaken. “I’m scared all the time for her.”

The mood darkened and the interview seemed beside the point. But as she does so smoothly on her show, DeGeneres shifted gears, asking her chef for an iced tea, and explained how her wife had helped her with her new special, attending every performance, giving feedback and appearing onstage.

DeGeneres said her wife also had a note about this interview. “Portia said: Just remember, the nicer they are, the more they are going to screw you,” DeGeneres said, smiling disarmingly.

Unsure how to respond, I replied awkwardly: “That’s good advice.” Then I started feeling self-conscious and several minutes later, asked my least-nice question, about the tabloid stories featuring anonymous complaints that she isn’t always kind to those she works with. “That bugs me if someone is saying that because it’s an outright lie,” she said. “The first day I said: ‘The one thing I want is everyone here to be happy and proud of where they work, and if not, don’t work here.’ No one is going to raise their voice or not be grateful. That’s the rule to this day.”

Minutes later, as if on cue, de Rossi entered in full riding gear. DeGeneres embraced her and shouted, “Baby, stop riding horses!”

De Rossi seemed unscathed, although her condition would worsen the next day, when she would have trouble concentrating. And as she bantered lovingly with her wife, she seemed charming and at ease, talking effusively about the special. “She’s just a bit more complicated than she appears on the show,” de Rossi said. “There’s more range of emotion.”

DeGeneres recently took the option to extend her contract — until the summer of 2020 — although she had been close to declining. On the question of leaving, she changes her mind all the time.

“I just think she’s such a brilliant actress and stand-up that it doesn’t have to be this talk show for her creativity,” de Rossi said. “There are other things she could tackle.”

DeGeneres, who has largely done voice work in film, most famously as Dory in Finding Nemo, said she would love to do another movie and play “someone unappealing”; her wife mentions doing radio or a podcast.

“I don’t see the end of her show as her career ending,” de Rossi said.

DeGeneres smiled and considered the comment for a second. But she skipped the kindest response and went straight for the laugh: “You have a concussion. What do you know?”

Ellen-liners!

• I have just learned that penguins are monogamous for life, which doesn’t really surprise me all that much because they all look exactly alike. It’s not like they’re going to meet a better-looking penguin someday.
  
• I like my coffee like I like my men... I don’t drink coffee.
  
• Can’t we just love everybody and judge them by the car they drive?
  
• Come on, if you don’t win tonight it doesn’t mean you’re not a good person. It just means you’re not a good actor.
  
• My point is, life is about balance. The good and the bad. The highs and the lows. The pina and the colada.