Yahoo Lifestyle Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss ‘One Thousand Percent’ Wanted to Take Over ‘Ellen DeGeneres Show,’ Says Allison Holker
Stephen “tWitch” Boss died just months after The Ellen DeGeneres Show signed off the air in May 2022.
In widow Allison Holker’s memoir, This Far: My Story of Love, Loss, and Embracing the Light, out Tuesday, the 36-year-old reveals that the end of DeGeneres’ daytime talk show was “bittersweet” for the choreographer, dancer and producer.
In her new book, Holker says that her husband—who died by suicide on Dec. 13, 2022, at age 40—said that Boss was “sad to leave his other ‘home,’” but he also saw the end of DeGeneres’ era as “an opportunity to shed his deejay role and branch out into new, more ambitious ventures.”
Still, she adds, “Would he have liked to have taken Ellen’s place and become the host? One thousand percent yes, but several months of discussions with the network went nowhere. Stephen was disappointed, but in typical tWitch fashion he framed it in a positive light.”
Holker, who married Boss on Dec. 10, 2013, says she doesn’t believe the speculation around Boss’ death that the end of Ellen was “destabilizing, because he wasn’t out of a job.” But the big change led to “a shift in Stephen’s routine.”
“No longer bound to a schedule,” she writes, “Stephen had more time to spend inside his head. The dark corners of his mind were not a healthy place for him to poke around in. The internal turmoil that he had suppressed while portraying happy-go-lucky tWitch on a daily basis started bubbling to the surface.”
In This Far, Holker recalls Boss turning down upcoming gigs and writes openly about his depression. She says in the book's prologue that his death was “incomprehensible.”
After Boss’ death, Holker founded the Move With Kindness Foundation, which “aims to carry on the legacy of Stephen tWitch Boss by spreading love and mental health awareness.”
She also debuted her new romance via Instagram with boyfriend Adam Edmunds in November 2024, and published a children's book, Keep Dancing Through: A Boss Family Groove, in January that year.
Holker's memoir, This Far: My Story of Love, Loss, and Embracing the Light, is out now.
If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide or struggling with suicidal thoughts, help is available 24 hours a day through the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.
Related: Allison Holker's Net Worth: What Is the Professional Dancer and Memoir Author Worth?
