New York ? She was once simply Ellen DeGeneres, comedian. And that’s what she would like to be again.

Everything changed in the spring of 1997, when DeGeneres proclaimed she was a lesbian on the cover of Time magazine. It was a major TV event when her character on the ABC sitcom “Ellen” came out a month later.

Now she was Ellen DeGeneres, gay comedian.

There’s no putting that genie back in the bottle. But DeGeneres’ new HBO stand-up special seems designed as a transition to a time when, she hopes, her sexual status won’t matter. It premiered Saturday night.

Catching her breath recently after dodging photographers outside a Manhattan hotel, she talked about how some of her stand-up comedy audience was there for the wrong reasons.

“They come because they’re gay and I’m gay, and it’s not like they really get the humor that I’m doing or get that that’s not what I’m really all about,” she said. “They come expecting to see some kind of thing, or they want to scream out. And as much as they’re coming from a good place because I did something that helped them … it is disruptive some times.”

About 90 percent of the audience for her 2000 stand-up comedy tour was gay or lesbian, she said. This year, she sensed it’s about 50-50 gay and straight.

Where’s our leader?

At the outset of the HBO show, taped before a New York audience, DeGeneres noted that despite their differences, members of her audience all had one thing in common. “We’re all gay,” she says.

Comedian Ellen DeGeneres poses in this undated publicity photo. DeGeneres' new HBO stand-up special seems partly designed as a transition to a time when, she hopes, her sexual status won't matter. Here

The crowd roars. She cracks a few jokes about non-gays looking around nervously.

“That’s my obligatory gay reference,” she continues. “I have to say something gay, otherwise people might leave here tonight and say, ‘She didn’t do anything gay. She’s not our leader. What happened to our leader?”‘

What everyone really has in common, she says, is they all like to laugh. She follows with nearly an hour of observational comedy, jokes about cell phones, behavior in elevators and annoying TV commercials.

The “g word” is never mentioned again.

DeGeneres said she’s not making a calculated effort to distance herself from a gay and lesbian audience, and she’s grateful for any fans that have stuck with her during the past few years, gay or straight.

Scott Seomin, entertainment media director for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, didn’t believe the gay audience would feel abandoned. DeGeneres built her career on comedy that had nothing to do with being gay, he said.

That wasn’t the case with the later years of her TV show. The final season was widely considered unpleasant, and DeGeneres fought with ABC over how much of the show dealt with sexual orientation. She protested when ABC slapped a parental advisory on a show where her character kissed another woman.

“It was no longer a character who happened to be a lesbian,” Seomin said. “It was a lesbian character. And it suffered. It became a very different show.”

Learning process

He said he understood the psychology involved.

“When someone comes out of the closet, they really come out with a bang,” he said. “It is such a relief. Depending on the experience, if you’re accepted, you want to talk about it more. The way she was embraced empowered her to do more.”

But the embrace didn’t stretch far beyond the gay and lesbian community. Her secret fears — that she wouldn’t get work or that people wouldn’t like her because she was gay — came true, DeGeneres said.

“It made me insane,” she said.

“I was sort of an example of why people shouldn’t do it,” she said. “It took me three years to get back on my feet again. It was a long time before I had another chance. I had to do the last (HBO) special because it was all I could do. I wasn’t being offered anything. I thought, ‘God, I have to write another special and remind people of who I am and that my humor wouldn’t change.”‘

For all the career calculation that has gone into her HBO special, something completely different may help her more in the long run. DeGeneres has drawn raves, and introduced herself to a new generation, with her voiceover work on the hit Disney-Pixar movie “Finding Nemo.”

This fall, she will get another test before a mainstream audience when her syndicated talk show makes its debut.

DeGeneres said she’s always admired Johnny Carson and will use him as a model for an entertainment-oriented talk show.

“I think it will be the thing that will overshadow everything else I do in my career,” she said. “I want to do this for 15 years or so. I want this to be the last thing I do. I can only be myself and be real and make it entertaining and fun and something I would like to sit down and watch every day.”

If you yearn to see her perform stand-up live, you’ve probably missed your chance. Between the talk show commitment and her distaste for travel, those days are over, she said.

“I grew up making my mom laugh because it changed her mood, because she was going through a divorce with my dad,” she said. “And it made me feel good that I could make her laugh. That’s how it all started — and that’s what it should be about.”