Entertainment

Grab Some Tissues & Watch Ashton Kutcher Surprise Ellen DeGeneres With A Huge Donation

by Parry Ernsberger

Ellen DeGeneres loves surprising people. She does it all the time. Recently, however, the tables got turned when Ashton Kutcher dropped by The Ellen DeGeneres Show unannounced — and you're probably going to want to have some tissues nearby. On May 23, Kutcher surprised DeGeneres with a $4 million donation for her African wildlife foundations. The gesture basically brought DeGeneres to tears, and, great, now everyone's crying.

DeGeneres seemingly had no idea that anyone would be stopping by that day, according to the clip. "I've just been told that a friend of mine is back stage, and is here to talk to me," the host told the audience. "So, whoever you are, please come out and talk to me." She looks pretty nervous about the whole thing, almost as if she's expecting some kind of Maury Povich-style confrontation.

As Kutcher comes around the corner, the crowd goes understandably wild, and DeGeneres seems cautiously optimistic — smiling and happy to see her friend, but also like, "What is he going to do to me?" After some nervous small talk, DeGeneres tells Kutcher that she's about to go on vacation to Africa, in order to start building her brand new wild life foundation, which was a recent birthday gift from her wife, Portia De Rossi.

The show cuts to break, as per DeGeneres' request — "I don't know what we're drawing out, this better be good," she said — and, when they return, Kutcher makes a partial confession. The actor tells DeGeneres that he and his business partner, Guy Oseary, recently discovered a new funds-sharing app for their technology investment company, Sound Ventures.

Oseary then comes out to join them both, and Kutcher explains how the app, Ripple, works. According to Kutcher, the app's owners told him that they "really care about being an ethical company, and giving a portion of this platform away to people that are doing good in the world."

DeGeneres nervously nodded in response, and Kutcher continued, "So, this was around the same time that I ran into you on the beach, and you told me about this amazing birthday gift [the wildlife foundation] that you got from Portia. And you explained to me that if you weren't [hosting a show], what you'd be working on is [the foundation]." Get the tissues ready. Seriously.

"I would be saving the gorillas, yes," DeGeneres replied. "You never ask anyone for anything, ever," Kutcher said, as he and Oseary continued to build up the big news. "You're always thinking about everyone else," Kutcher told her, definitely a little choked up himself now. "And we wanted to show you that people are thinking about you. So, on behalf of Ripple, we'd like to give you $4 million." Here come the waterworks.

DeGeneres is basically rendered speechless, until Kutcher tells her that they can immediately transfer it into her account. "Do you want to push [the transfer button] or do you want me to push it?" he asks. "I would like to push it," DeGeneres says, finally speaking words. "I would like to push it real good." LOL, because Salt-N-Pepa, get it?

The transaction completes, and there's hugs and cheers and "I love you's" from DeGeneres to Kutcher and Oseary, and — is anyone else out of tissues already? So emotional right now. Speaking of emotional, if you haven't watched the clip of De Rossi gifting DeGeneres the foundation in the first place, stock back up on tissues and get ready for your heart to swell five sizes.

The recently-established Ellen DeGeneres Wildlife Fund, according to its website, "will permanently secure the future of wild gorillas in Rwanda by building on successful field conservation efforts, while empowering the people living near the gorillas to thrive in relationship to their own ecosystem." And now they have an extra $4 million to see all of that through! Tears.

If you'd like to support DeGeneres' wild life fund, you can do so by snagging some sweet merchandise here. Now, everyone can help DeGeneres save the gorillas.