Challenges are her specialty

In the shock and sorrow of national tragedy, America has, coincidentally and unintentionally, turned to an unlikely healer -- television comedian Ellen DeGeneres.

The first time she was asked to host the annual Emmy Awards show, it was just before 9/11. This year, it was before Hurricane Katrina.

“I’m going to think twice before I agree to host something again, I can tell you that,” she said wryly in a recent interview.

Over the last few weekends, in between working on her hit daytime talk show, DeGeneres has been drafting a monologue for Sunday’s telecast hoping to again strike the right note in a time of tragedy.

“I have to acknowledge it,” DeGeneres, 47, a native of New Orleans, said of hosting the Emmys while the nation struggles to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. “At the same time, I have to make sure people are relaxed and want to laugh.”

DeGeneres said even her own friends and family who are recovering from the effects of the flooding have managed to fit humor in among their stages of grief, acceptance or bewilderment.

“For me, it’s the only thing we can do. You help people as much as you can. If you don’t have some break from it, some relief, it’s too much.”

Her “Ellen DeGeneres Show Hurricane Relief Fund” has raised more than $5 million.

Hosting the 2001 Emmy Awards show was a particularly delicate assignment, because it had been postponed twice after the terrorist attacks and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. DeGeneres won critical praise for giving the nation a way to laugh at a time when many people wondered whether laughing at all was appropriate.

In her monologue, she told the audience that the terrorists “can’t take away our creativity, our striving for excellence, our joy. Only network executives can do that.” She went on to say that she was an ideal host “because, think about it: What would bug the Taliban more than seeing a gay woman in a suit surrounded by Jews?”

While the moment was seen as bolstering the national mood, DeGeneres was herself at the start of a personal and professional healing process that would result in one of television’s most striking comebacks. Two failed sitcoms, a backlash to her public coming out as a lesbian, and a high-profile breakup with actress Anne Heche had left her reeling and desperate for work.

Looking back, DeGeneres sees her low point as a decisive, Lance Armstrong sort of moment. “Everything that defined me was taken away. I had no way to express my creativity. What comes out is anger and resentment and bitterness and all that stuff that is really bad for you.”

Then she decided to try a daytime talk show. “This was not something like, ‘Oh, well, if this fails, I’ll do something else,’ ” she said. “I don’t think there was a whole lot left.”

Now entering its third season, “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” has become one of those rare programs that’s both a critical favorite and mainstream hit. Her self-deprecating observations about everyday life, improvised dancing, and high-profile, though frequently self-promoting, celebrity guests, have attracted 10 million viewers per week and won several daytime Emmys. “Ellen” is the fastest-growing talk show with women in two coveted demographics: 18 to 49 and 25 to 54.

On Monday, her NBC show will continue Emmy festivities with behind-the-scenes footage and live taping from New York.

“ ‘Ellen’” has found an audience. It’s crossed that line to where it’s a long-term franchise,” said Jim Paratori, president of Telepictures Productions, which produces the show. “It will be around as long as she wants to do it.” But in the beginning, he admits it was a “hard sell.”

“After the coming out and the Anne Heche relationship and the onslaught of publicity that followed, there was a perception that Ellen was a controversial person.

“It took some persuading for people to take her back.”

It also required therapy and inner work. DeGeneres, a slight, short, breathless woman in pants and a jacket, had raced into the interview at her production offices. Asked if she might want to relax, she looked surprised. “This is me relaxed,” she said, adding she’s much more calm than she used to be. “I’ve thought a lot about life and what matters and why people act a certain way and judgments. I’ve got to a place where I’m proud of myself, I know I’m a good person.”

Before signing on for the talk show, DeGeneres wrote herself an HBO special “to prove to people I’m more than this gay person that people made me, that I’m funny and smart and the things that everyone didn’t want to see.”

It wasn’t until “Finding Nemo,” the G-rated 2003 blockbuster animated film, that DeGeneres felt the tide begin to turn. The role of Dory, a well-intentioned but bumbling fish, was written with her in mind. At that point, she said, “I could feel the momentum.”

Like other awards shows, the ratings for the Emmys have been dropping in recent years. This year, producers are trying new things, such as a sing-off with celebrities like Donald Trump, William Shatner and Kristen Bell. Hopes are also pinned on DeGeneres to set the tone and draw in the audience.

Ken Ehrlich, the Emmy’s executive producer this year, said “I think that Ellen and Billy Crystal are innately the two most perfect people to do these shows because they bring an intelligence to it. You really get the feeling that they like what they’re talking about.”

For both of them, he said, “it’s not about scoring as a comic. It’s about being the team leader for three hours.”

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Times staff writer Maria Elena Fernandez contributed to this story.