Earlier this week, Portia de Rossi appeared on her wife Ellen DeGeneres' eponymous talk show to discuss her role on Scandal and to dispel ongoing reports that they're secretly planning to have a baby. The 41-year-old actress readdressed both topics when she appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Thursday.
"It's been a while," Jimmy Kimmel told her. "I haven't seen you for a little bit of time." De Rossi replied, "Actually, I think the last time we saw each other, we were in bed together. It was you, me and Ellen."
"My first and only threesome," the late-night comedian joked. "That's right. We shot something for the Oscars show when Ellen was hosting." Going for the joke, de Rossi told him, "And then, you had a baby!"
"Oh! That's right! Which one of you got me pregnant?" Kimmel joked.
De Rossi then asked Kimmel about his 3-month-old daughter, whom he said is doing "great." In turn, he asked his guest about "rumors that [she] and Ellen are going to have a baby. Is there anything to that?"
Groaning, de Rossi said, "Oh, I know. I know. Oh, gosh. It's just one big rumor that doesn't seem to go away, and at this point, I feel like I'm disappointing the whole of America, not just my mother. You know? It's true. The tabloids are at me. My mother's at me. I just..." the actress said, shaking her head.
Besides, de Rossi and DeGeneres have two two young nieces to keep them company. "They're adorable and we love them and we play with them—and then we leave," the Arrested Development actress said, adding, "My brother's way too smart to leave me alone with his children. It's supervised play, Jimmy."
De Rossi said her elder niece favors DeGeneres, thanks to perks like "free stuff. There's meet the pop star that she wants to meet. There's 12 Days of Giveaways, obviously. She's a pretty good aunt to have."
Complicating matters, she joked, is that they watch DeGeneres' show. "They've wised up," she said.
Family talk aside, de Rossi also revealed how she lobbied for a role on Scandal.
"I hounded Shonda Rhimes. I am such a huge fan of hers. I think she is a genius. I wanted to be a part of that show so badly. I just went at it," she said. "'Hounding' in Hollywood terms really means my agents called her agents more than was appropriate...She took a meeting with me, which was so exciting to get to be in the same room with her and talk about her amazing, amazing shows. And then I didn't hear from her for a little while, so I thought, 'Oh, well, that didn't work out.' Then one day I get a call from my agent who says to me, 'I have Scandal news.' Now, I'm not thinking Scandal the show. I'm just thinking scandal. I'm paranoid, you know? So, I'm thinking, 'This is not the best way to tell me that I'm about to be part of my absolute favorite TV show of all time.' Within three days, I was at a table read."
There was just one problem: she didn't know much about her character.
During her first table read, de Rossi recalled, "I realized I didn't know the name of my character."
De Rossi has no idea how long she'll be on Scandal. "I was brought on for an arc and it was a little open-ended," she said. Joking about her character, the actress said, "I am doing everything I can to stay alive."