Obituary / Published 2026-11-03

Matthew Wright, Former Ellen Executive Producer, Dies at 52

Matthew Wright, a former executive producer of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, died on Friday, 30 October, while working remotely in Los Angeles. He was 52. Both reports take the account from a GoFundMe campaign for his family, which says he and his husband were both laid off this summer and had passed its 50,000 dollar goal by Monday.

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Wright produced The Ellen DeGeneres Show from 2006 until its 2022 finale and died on 30 October in Los Angeles at 52. A fundraiser for his family calls the death an unfathomable tragedy.

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What do the sources establish?

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Platform / SourceCore Stance / QuoteEngagement MetricTimestamp
Former Ellen Executive Producer Matthew Wright Dies as Ellen DeGeneres Posts Tearful Video — The Hollywood ReporterReported context: [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object]Not recorded
Ellen DeGeneres Show Exec Producer Matthew Wright Dies At 52 — DeadlineReported context: [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object]Not recorded

THE SHORT VERSION

  • Matthew Wright, a former executive producer of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, died on Friday, 30 October, while working remotely in Los Angeles. He was 52.
  • Both reports take the account from a GoFundMe campaign for his family, which says he and his husband were both laid off this summer and had passed its 50,000 dollar goal by Monday.
  • Ellen DeGeneres posted a tearful video calling him the glue to the show's family, and Andy Lassner and Loni Love also paid tribute. No cause of death was shared.

A death reported from Los Angeles

Matthew Wright, a former executive producer of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, died on Friday, 30 October, while working remotely in Los Angeles. He was 52. Both The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline base their accounts of the death on a GoFundMe campaign set up for his family, rather than on a statement from relatives or from police. Deadline states plainly that no details about the cause of his death were shared.

His family is in New York. The campaign, quoted by both outlets, says his husband, father, sister and niece are there and waiting to be reunited with him for a proper goodbye. Deadline names the husband as Justin Fusella and lists him among Wright's survivors. Neither report says what he was working on when he died, or when he last appeared on the programme, and neither adds a detail from anyone who saw him that week.

A fundraiser, a layoff and a goal passed

The Hollywood Reporter reports that the fundraiser sought 50,000 dollars to cover a funeral and a memorial and to set up a trust for Wright's niece, and that it had passed its goal by Monday afternoon. Both outlets quote the campaign calling the death an “unfathomable tragedy”. The campaign also says the unexpected costs of getting him home from Los Angeles are more than the family can bear, and asks anyone who knew him to share the page. It closes by asking anyone at dinner who sees a sunset to know that Matt is looking down, loving them and wildly disappointed in what they ordered.

The campaign adds that Wright and his husband were both laid off this summer, a detail both outlets repeat without further comment. Deadline puts Wright's time on the show at 16 years, which matches THR's dates of 2006 to the finale in 2022. Deadline also says he was a regular presence on camera, appearing in a recurring segment called “Strong Opinions with Matt”. THR describes one of those segments: Wright admonishing restaurants for bringing too many appetizers to the table at once.

DeGeneres posted a tearful video on Monday

Ellen DeGeneres posted a tearful video on Instagram on Monday. She said: “He was an amazing guy. He was funny. God, he made me laugh.” She went on to call him smart and kind, and said he would surprise her with things he did all the time. She also said everyone on the show loved him, and that she loved him.

In the same video she said: “He is and always will be the glue to our entire family” at The Ellen Show. She also said she believed Wright and Stephen Boss, the show's former DJ known as tWitch, who died in 2022, were now reunited and dancing and laughing. THR reports that she ended the tribute with a compilation of Wright's funniest moments on the show, including the appetizer clip.

The two reports are uneven on his résumé

Deadline records producing credits on several episodes of Ellen's Game of Games in 2017 and 2018 and on DeGeneres's 2009 special Ellen's Bigger, Longer & Uncut. It also traces his television career back to the 2002-06 SoapNet series Soap Talk, where he worked as a producer before joining the daytime show. THR carries none of those credits, and neither outlet says what he did after the Ellen finale. Neither lists how old he was when he joined the show, or who else was producing it alongside him.

THR stays with the show and the people around it: the video, the fundraiser and tributes from former colleagues. It gives his age with a qualifier, saying he was 52 according to reports, rather than stating it as confirmed. It does not say whether he had been ill, and it does not name the remote job he was doing when he died.

Lassner's photographs and Loni Love's tribute

Andy Lassner, another former executive producer of the show, posted photographs of himself and Wright taken on the set of The Jennifer Hudson Show on Thursday, where Lassner now works. THR says Lassner described the pictures as taken hours before Wright died. Deadline says Wright had stopped by the set to visit, and that Lassner shared the photographs on Instagram.

Lassner wrote: “We are all in shock. He was a brilliant producer and an even better human being.” He described how Wright flew between Los Angeles and New York almost every weekend to look after his mother before she died, and ended: “We should have had so much more time with him.” Loni Love, a former co-host of The Real, wrote on Facebook that she was devastated and heartbroken, and called Wright a talented, sweet man who was always game for anything, THR reports.

What the two reports do and do not say

The confirmed record is narrow. Wright died on 30 October at 52 in Los Angeles while working remotely; his family was in New York; the fundraiser for his funeral passed its goal; DeGeneres, Lassner and Love posted tributes. Neither outlet reports a cause of death, a funeral date or a statement from the family beyond the campaign's own wording, and neither says whether a memorial has been scheduled. Neither describes who found him or when his family last saw him.

Deadline notes that his survivors include his husband, Justin Fusella. Everything else about the family's circumstances comes from the fundraiser, which is also where both outlets took the phrase unfathomable tragedy. Related coverage on this site includes the death of Patrick Stewart at 86, the death of Earl Barret at 94 and the death of Elke Sommer at 85.

Sources & reporting limits

  1. Former Ellen Executive Producer Matthew Wright Dies as Ellen DeGeneres Posts Tearful Video — The Hollywood Reporter
  2. Ellen DeGeneres Show Exec Producer Matthew Wright Dies At 52 — Deadline
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