Chelsea Handler talks comedy, snake wrangling with Bindi Irwin, and what sent her to therapy
Trailblazing comic Chelsea Handler is not afraid to speak her mind. She opens up on Trump, touring and what finally sent her to therapy ahead of her Australian shows.
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Chances are you first came across Chelsea Handler on her show Chelsea Lately, a TV show that ran for a very healthy 161 episodes from 2007.
Right off the bat the 44-year-old US comedian, actor, writer, producer and activist gives us the scoop on her next small screen, big-deal project as she recounts the last 12 hours of her life.
“What’s today, God, is it Monday? I got up and worked out for an hour then I had new rugs delivered to my house then I had a production meeting with a writer about a development deal I have with Universal for my memoir, Life Will Be the Death Of Me, then I recorded a podcast.
“Universal optioned the rights on it so we were meeting to develop a TV show.”
Neither IMDB or Wikipedia has any information online about this.
Fanatical readers, please amend.
Life Will Be The Death Of Me is the name of her stand-up tour of Australia and was Handler’s sixth New York Times Bestselling Book.
Sales are helped by the iconoclast’s 3.6 million followers on Instagram and 8 million on Twitter.
“I don’t spend much time thinking about my followers,” she says.
“I just wanna be real, I don’t wanna just be cashing cheques and being a dickhead, I wanna be cool. I wanna be thoughtful and for people to rely on me for integrity.”
Handler has a firm handle on maintaining cred.
She helped pave the way for other caustic comics like Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal program. In 2006 she produced and starred in The Chelsea Handler show, which mixed stand-up routines with spoofs, sketches and biting satire.
She parlayed that success into the aforementioned Chelsea Lately, Pretty Wild, Are You There, Chelsea?, Uganda Be Kidding Me Live, Chelsea Does and her talk show for Netflix, Chelsea.
Recently, she was at it again with Hello, Privilege tackling first-world problems and the brittle grasp of middle-class reality.
She had a niche role on the rebooted Will and Grace series as “Power Lesbian client” Donna Zimmer.
The catalyst for writing her memoir came after she entered therapy when Donald Trump became President of the United States.
She announced Trump’s election to the White House would be “the end of civilisation”.
Then it happened and dredged up old scars.
“My brother died when I was 9, I didn’t have the vocabulary at that time to examine that injury and to grieve the normal way.
“I bottled it up and stored it away and over the years that calcified and became a big, big wound.
“I sat down with my therapist and asked her ‘Are you constantly agitated by everyone around you?’ and she said ‘No,’ so I was like ‘Shoot, I must be a bitch’.”
Handler is a big believer in the meditation app Headspace.
“Yeah I’m interviewing that guy from Headspace, Andy Puddicombe, on my podcast this week.
“I meditate for 20 minutes every morning and that’s helped my attention span so much.”
Many comedians fall into the mental loop of thinking they need to be funny every day across social media, with their wisecracking friends, to the service station attendant.
Not Handler.
“When I wake up I feel like I can be pretty much whoever I wanna be, I’m very self confident, I don’t know where it’s come from but it’s helped me a lot because if I don’t feel like being funny one day I won’t be.
“I’ve never been as ‘with it’ on stage as I am on this tour. I’m not drunk.
“Before I’d get lazy if I had a second show, oh screw it, it’s OK, I can have a drink.
“That’s not the show people were paying to see.
“Sure, people loved seeing the show because I was buzzed, it was sorta part of my schtick. It’s much more fun now.
“This is the first stand-up tour where I get up and tell stories.
“In previous shows I got up and told jokes. This show talks about my state of mind before I went into therapy and all the ways I screwed up while I was in therapy and all those improvements while you’re trying to be a better person.
“I once ran into the FOX News lounge at the airport and confronted anybody that voted for Donald Trump.”
Oh to have been there.
When she’s not doing 99 things at once she tweets about running around in her house in underwear drinking vodka.
“I’ve done that recently. Verrrrry recently. I live in Bel Air so …,” she leaves it hanging. She’ll have a tipple with us this week. One male won’t be invited.
“When I was shooting Chelsea Lately in Australia I asked the security guard if we could get some towels for the beach and he brought me back one napkin.
“None of us could even speak because we were so gobsmacked. I asked my friend ‘Are Australian guys stupid?’ and she said ‘No. This guy is off.’ I was right on the money. He was a drongo.
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“I’m afraid of snakes. I met little Bindi Irwin the crocodile hunter last time and she took me to see a huge boa constrictor to overcome my fear.
“This time around I’ll be at the beach for sure, I mean, gotta get that sunburn and shark attack you can only get at the beach in Australia.”
Chelsea Handler, Hamer Hall, the Arts Centre. Mon, 8pm. $81.60. artscentremelbourne.com.au