Chelsea Handler: The drunk mean girl who's actually pretty nice
Chelsea Handler's frank, sometimes brash sense of humor on her late night talk show "Chelsea Lately" has won her a pretty loyal following. Now there's news she's about to take her one-liners to a whole new venue. Our Tracy Smith sat her down for some Questions-and-Answers:
Chelsea Handler had an itch: She no longer loved her own long-running cable TV show.
"It's the seven-year itch," she laughed. "I've got it in a big way."
In April, she scratched it, and announced the show would be ending. And now, she says, she feels "very fulfilled" to be leaving.
And why not? She's the only female late-night talk show host on TV right now, and her program on the E! network, "Chelsea Lately," is watched by more than half a million people every night. Her five books are all bestsellers, and her stand-up comedy tours are standing-room-only.
But Chelsea needed a change.
"I had a really good time doing this show, and I probably stayed a little bit longer than I wanted to," she said. "But I just kind of had a feeling, 'Oh, maybe I should stay a little bit longer until another woman does a late night show.' And then I came to the conclusion: that's not my responsibility. If I'm ready to move on, I should move on."
She was making her decision while men were playing late-night musical chairs. Jimmy Fallon nabbed Jay Leno's spot. In Fallon's seat: Seth Meyers. Stephen Colbert will take David Letterman's chair, and Craig Ferguson will leave his.
And where was she in all those discussions? "Well, I mean, I've never wanted to do any of those jobs. I've never wanted to take over for Letterman. Obviously when that happened, it was like, 'Oh, well, maybe.' There were definite phone calls about it. But I never sat down in a meeting and said, 'This is what I want to do.'"
"You never wanted to do a late-night network TV show?" asked Smith.
"No, I'm not a network kind of girl!"
After all, Handler's known for saying whatever's on her mind, and she doesn't seem to give a bleep if it offends.
Like when she feuded with CNN's Piers Morgan:
MORGAN: "You tweet, very amusingly."
HANDLER: "I wish you did . . . I want your viewers to know -- I mean, they must know because they're probably following you on Twitter, I mean, you can't even pay attention for 60 seconds -- you're a terrible interviewer!"
So maybe it's no surprise that Handler's next job is one even the cable censors can't touch: She's moving to the streaming video service Netflix -- not a TV network -- known for hot new shows like "House of Cards" and "Orange Is the New Black."
"And I want to do more interesting stories," Handler said. "I didn't want to be tied to doing celebrity news. I want to talk about human interests, I want to talk about politics, I want to talk about sports. I want answers to questions that I want to ask."
Handler is scheduled to create four documentary specials in 2015, and then, a full-time talk show in 2016. It's a big leap.
When asked if she was scared about stepping off that precipice, she replied, "I'm never really scared. I don't really have a lot of fear-based issues."
Chelsea says her fearlessness developed when she was growing up in New Jersey, where she was a pretty independent kid.
"Well, I didn't really have a choice," she said. "I was independent because my parents were over it. I was the sixth kid and they were, like, done with setting up playdates. It made me feel like a total outcast, because my parents just refused to participate in my childhood."
"There's a thing called helicopter parenting. My parents were like ceiling fan parents. They'd be on a little bit and then just turn off: 'We don't work anymore, we're in the Bahamas.'"
At the age of 19, Chelsea left her family to pursue an acting career in Los Angeles.
"I wanted people to know who I was. Even if it's not for everyone, I have a point of view that's different, and I was going to prove it to everyone. I just think I wanted to be famous."
She waited tables and started doing standup. TV shows like "Girls Behaving Badly" soon followed, and then she broke through with a book about her one-night stands. Fans were smitten.
When we met her on tour in Detroit, she spent most of her time off-stage signing books -- more than 500 in the space of a few hours. ("Make sure the book you have is my book, though!")
"I like to go on tour because I like to meet my fans. I like them to see me face-to-face, putting in the effort, putting in the time, not coasting on my laurels. And being on stage in front of that many people who have paid money to see you is a responsibility."
And what they're paying for is a 39-year-old single woman who makes fun of everyone, especially herself -- a woman who wrote a book called "Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea."
But is she really that mean? Or that drunk?
"You know, on my tour, when I'm doing stand-up, people send drinks up on the stage all the time, and if I don't drink it, they're really upset. Or if I have a cup and it's clearly water, like, I always put it in a red plastic cup or a glass, because people want to think it's vodka when it's not necessarily vodka."
Smith asked, "How much do you really drink a day?"
"A day? Not as much as people think I drink at all. Yes, I drink. I don't drink every day. I'm not hammered every night. Hardly."
"At the same time, you have this empire. So when you joke about being a functioning alcoholic, you're not really?"
"No. I wouldn't call myself an alcohol -- I mean, I could be a functioning alcoholic. I'm sure a lot of people would say that about me. I may be. I don't think I'm an alcoholic. But I mean, most alcoholics don't think that, do they?"
And Chelsea Handler functions well enough to earn a reported more than $20 million a year from TV, standup comedy and book sales.
"So what do you think you learned about money, now that you have quite a bit of it?" Smith asked.
"To throw it away," Handler replied. "I have no respect for it. I give everyone -- yeah! I don't care about money. I mean, if somebody needs a car, I have no problem buying them a car."
"Have you done that?"
"Yes. Yes."
"More than once?"
"Yeah. Yeah. I've bought homes. I've bought cars. I've bought any -- I mean, it's just the right thing to do in my mind."
Chuy Bravo has been Chelsea's on-air side-kick since the start of her show. "She is the first person that gave me a brand-new car when we first started working," he told Smith.
She asked, " What should people out there know about Chelsea that maybe they don't get from the funny jokes on TV?"
" That she's a very lovable person," Bravo replied. "Inside of her heart, I know she loves me."
"I don't like to be thanked," Handler said. "I like the feeling it gives me when I do it, but I don't like to continue to talk about it."
"It's interesting, you're blushing a little bit," said Smith.
"Well, I mean, I'm sitting here talking about how great I am," she laughed. "So, obviously, I mean it's embarrassing. I'm sitting here -- what a generous person I am!"
Now, everyone knows the truth about where Chelsea Handler's headed. But the secret she's still keeping may be even more interesting: the drunk, mean girl . . . is actually pretty nice.
For more info:
- chelseahandler.com
- Follow Chelsea Handler on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram
- "Uganda Be Kidding Me" by Chelsea Handler (Grand Central Publishing); Also available in Large Print Hardcover, Trade Paperback, eBook, and Unabridged Audio Download formats
- "Chelsea Lately" (E! Online)