Chelsea Handler

Chelsea Handler on the throne with Jay Leno & William Shatner !!!!

She dishes, and people listen
Chelsea Handler is candid, funny, and someone everyone relates to

By Nick A. Zaino III

Globe Correspondent / August 15, 2008

As long as she can remember, Chelsea Handler has wanted just one thing - for people to listen to her. Preferably a lot of people. And preferably on television.

But when she dropped out of college after one semester and moved to Los Angeles at the tender age of 19, she had no clue where her future would take her. She hadn't thought about being a talk show host, an author, an actress, or a stand-up comedian. She was sleeping on her aunt and uncle's couch, driving their kids to school, and waiting tables, trying to find her inspiration.



"I just really felt like I had a lot to say, and I just didn't know how that was going to come about," she says. "I just knew that I was pulled and driven to make that happen."

Now 33, Handler has more people listening than she had dared dream. She hosts the popular "Chelsea Lately" on the E! network. She's the author of The New York Times bestseller "Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea," a costar of the Web show "In the Motherhood," and a touring comedian. She performs at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium tomorrow night and has a book reading earlier in the day at Willow Books & Cafe in Acton.


"Obviously, this is great for me," she says. "I'm not Nicole Kidman, I'm not J.Lo. It's never going to be that crazy for me, I don't think. And this is perfect. I love this. I have a really good time at work."


Five nights a week, she dishes about celebrities and pop culture on "Chelsea Lately," poking fun at stories about the Jonas Brothers' new mansion in Dallas or Kevin Federline's workout tape with a panel of comedians and commentators. She has wondered aloud what Shia LaBeouf was doing driving a Ford F-150 during his recent accident ("What is he, a cement mason on the weekend?") and how Madonna's biceps make her look like a dude.


Handler doesn't go for the throat like Kathy Griffin, and she says she hasn't run into anyone who has been too upset that she mentioned them. Her approach, she says, is just to dish, to make fun of celebrities the same way she makes fun of her friends for their behavior, and to acknowledge her own faults.


"I'm guilty of ridiculous behavior, too, and I'm very self-deprecating," she says. "I don't put myself on a pedestal. I know how I behave, and I curb ridiculous behavior. I don't see why everybody else can't, either - obviously not to too much of a degree, otherwise I'd have nothing to talk about on my TV show."


Handler hasn't been shy about her personal life, either. In her two books, she has chronicled her sex life ("My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands") and her childhood ("Are You There, Vodka?. . ."), revealing the kinds of things most people would prefer to hide, from stories about her father's lack of inhibitions to tales of her own promiscuity.



That frankness has made a public fan of Jay Leno, who has tapped Handler as a frequent guest and sometime correspondent for "The Tonight Show." He loves her silliness and spontaneity and says she can get away with things female comics couldn't from his days in the clubs 30 years ago.

"You don't know what she's going to say," he says. "For years, men have had that handle. They can be sort of irresponsible and whatnot onstage, and now women can, too, and she's a classic example of that."



Something about that inappropriateness resonates with Handler's fans, who flock to her book readings.

"That's what I hear a lot: 'Oh, you say what everyone's thinking,' " she says. "Well, I'm glad, because I'm saying what I'm thinking. I think when you know you're being honest about something, you're relating to a lot more people than you're aware of."


Handler is just as forthcoming about critiquing her faults as a host, which she is always striving to correct. "I watch myself to get better," she says, "to make sure I don't interrupt people, to make sure I don't talk so fast, because naturally I talk very fast. I can be annoying and I see that and I try and curb it. You know when you talk high and my voice gets high - that's annoying."


Heather McDonald, a writer and frequent round-table contributor on the show, says she has never had more fun working in television and can attest to Handler's work ethic.


"She's here every day, sometimes before all of us," says McDonald, who will open tomorrow's show. "She reads all the magazines, she's in the meeting, she's part of the editing process, she's a total producer. Plus, at the same time, she's playing pranks on everybody."


Handler is dedicated enough to her gig at E! that she may have to pass up the chance to reprise her role on "In the Motherhood" when the Web-based show moves to television. "Motherhood," which stars Leah Remini and Jenny McCarthy, was picked up by ABC, and is now being developed as a midseason replacement. But a full shooting schedule for a sitcom might be too much for her schedule, which also includes working on a third book.


"I would love to be able to try to squeeze it in on a much smaller scale," she says. "It's just not my first priority right now. I would never leave this show for a sitcom. That's not going to happen."


Besides, she would have less time to do stand-up comedy, something she was terrified of at first but has grown to love.


"The fact that I'm doing it 10 years later, I'm kind of impressed with myself," she says. "And that's as far as my impressiveness goes. I'm also impressed that I got up and took a run this morning, in case you're taking notes."


© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.