Chelsea Handler knows exactly what she wants. After an eventful 2022 that included a celebrated guest-hosting gig on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and the release in December of her latest Netflix special Revolution, the comedian is gearing up for an even bigger 2023. She is set to guest-host The Daily Show in February and, as she readily admits in her return to the The Last Laugh podcast, she is actively pursuing that chair on a permanent basis.
Handler talks about finding a new level of confidence on stage, why late-night TV is desperate for female voices, and why she still believes in love after breaking up with fellow comedian Jo Koy. She also weighs in on Kanye West and Dave Chappelle’s “hurtful” antisemitism and recalls the time she narrowly escaped an unwanted sexual advance from her one-time comedy hero Bill Cosby.
About an hour into her new special, after making fun of herself for everything from not knowing the difference between the sun and the moon to accidentally taking a yeast infection pill orally, Handler turns her attention to straight white men.
“As a society, you all owe us a fucking apology,” she says to screams of approval from her audience. “After all this time, when you guys ask us stupid fucking questions like, ‘We don’t know what do anymore, can we still open the door for you?’ it’s like, yeah, you’ve been raping us since the beginning of time, the least you could do is open the door for us!”
It’s in this final section of Revolution that Handler displays a new level of comedic confidence that has taken her decades to fully achieve. “Now that I’m in my forties and I’ve been doing this for 20 years or longer, you experience confidence and you experience a lack of confidence,” she says. “And then self-consciousness, and then wondering if anyone gives a shit about you.”
“You go through all of these cyclical things that one does when you’re in the public eye,” Handler adds, explaining that she ultimately came around to the realization that “you have to see your own value in order for anyone else to see it.”
With her Netflix special out in the world and some exciting opportunities on the horizon, Handler has never felt more essential to the comedy landscape. “I feel like it’s my best work and that I’m just getting really good at my craft,” she says of Revolution. “I feel really good about where I am. I feel grounded and focused in a way that I haven’t been in so long. And focused with the clarity of mind that comes with experience and comes with a lot of ups and downs. So all in all, I just feel like I’ve finally come into my own.”
Below is an edited excerpt from our conversation. You can listen to the whole thing by subscribing to The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts, and be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Tuesday.
You have this incredibly cathartic bit towards the end of the special about your frustrations with straight white men who are acting like victims. Is that something that you felt like you really needed to get off your chest?
Yeah, I mean, I want to help men. I’m not a man-hater. I love men. I want men to be better. I want to be better. I want to have an edification in my life. I’m constantly looking for ways to edify, and I feel like if you’re here and you’re an evolved person, aren’t you trying to do the same thing? Aren’t you trying to get better at being a person and not get stuck where you are? Why is there such a resistance to equality and respect? All anybody’s asking right now is to not be sexist and not be racist. That’s not a tall order. So what is everyone complaining about? And when I say everyone, I don’t mean everyone. There’s a section of white men that can’t understand what the problem is, and no matter how many times it’s been slowly man—or woman—splained to them, they seem to think we’re hysterical. And it’s like, you’d be hysterical too if nobody listened to you and said, “Wow, God, thanks for telling us that we’re such assholes, we’ll do better.”
You’ve been talking a lot about this, that it’s not so hard to not be racist and not be sexist and not be homophobic. All these things that many male comics have been complaining about. And it does seem like it is something that frustrates you because you have been able to do that, especially in recent years. Why do you think it is that you don’t find that difficult but other people do?
I like being told that there are parameters. You’re not allowed to hurt people’s feelings anymore? OK! I mean, hello! I did that all the time. I’m as guilty of it as any man. But I heard people when they said, “Stop it.” I heard what you said and I took a look at myself and I learned as much as I could and I read as much as I could. And yeah, I bang on about it because it’s something worth banging on about. You know, we’re not all given the same lot in life. You’re born in a certain place, and all of a sudden that defines your existence? That’s not right or fair. By admitting that there’s a problem, you’re realizing that there’s a need for a solution. Like I say in my special, we just won the rights to do what we want with our bodies 50 years ago and that is still trying to be taken away from us today. So we’re not hysterical, and you should be standing up fighting with us, not against us.
Even the titles of your specials, Evolution and now Revolution, speak to that willingness to change and evolve and listen and learn from people. And the documentary specials you were doing on Netflix were a lot about listening and talking to people. And there does seem to be this resistance to that from people who say, “I haven’t changed, the rest of the world has changed.” That’s the defense you hear from someone like Bill Maher.
It seems like Bill Maher needs to change.
He sees value in staying the same. But really there might be more value in changing and evolving.
Yeah, I think the resistance to change is the No. 1 mistake in life. Things are moving in a direction that you cannot control. So get on board and understand it. Don’t say no, because then you’re going to get left behind. So I have an allergic reaction to that kind of behavior.
Speaking of white men and Bill Maher, let’s talk about late-night TV. Because I’ve really been fascinated by your return to late-night TV in these different ways and your eagerness to get back to it. You guest-hosted Jimmy Kimmel Live! over the summer and I thought you were fantastic. It was so obvious that you should be there and that you belonged in that space.
Thank you.
The timing of it was particularly crazy, because it just happened to be that you were there the week that Roe v. Wade was overturned. So you got the opportunity to speak about it on that big platform in a way that none of the male hosts doing those nightly shows ever could have. Can you talk about what that was like to go in there at that time, and deciding how you wanted to talk about that in that moment?
Well, he has a great staff of writers who were obviously integral in creating that. But yeah, I went in there letting them know that I wanted to go in guns blazing. Like, let’s go. We’re going off on all of these people. It was like walking into a perfectly run operation, having an A team and me being on my A game, together, it was just great, every aspect of it. I loved it. It made me remember why I do that and why I want to do it again. It instilled that back in me, it sparked that again. I was like, oh, this is what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m supposed to be taking the news, regurgitating it out for everybody on a regular basis. That’s what I’m good for. That’s what I’m good at. And it was great for that purpose.
So as soon as Trevor [Noah stepped down from The Daily Show] and they were saying they needed guest hosts, I was like, yeah, let’s go, I’ll go do that too. And that’s a perfect job for me. That’s a great gig. So I want to go do that and see how that feels. And it’s gonna feel awesome because I’m gonna crush it. Because I love this stuff. I love the news, I love pop culture, I love combining it all with smart personalities, bringing on comedians like I did on Chelsea Lately, that roundtable aspect where you can have voices—more than a singular voice, more than one man speaking on behalf of women. All these late-night hosts are great, but they’re not representing us. Women represent women. And I would love that kind of vibe of a show again, having a bunch of comedians on, talking about the news every day in a more elevated way than Chelsea Lately was, in a different iteration so that we could have more of a broad spectrum of topics, which The Daily Show’s platform provides. You know, I feel like The Daily Show is another platform that’s an A+, and then you bring a talent to it and it’s a no-brainer. So I’m very much looking forward to my time there.
When you guest-hosted Kimmel’s show, it was the week after Samantha Bee had what ended up being her last show, even though we didn’t know it was her last show at the time.
I’m just so annoyed that Samantha Bee’s show was canceled. A lot of these shows don’t do well anymore. Why aren’t they canceled? Who cares if the show is not getting ratings? We need the representation. It’s about more than that. I understand that linear television isn’t what it used to be and we’re all moving into this different world, but in the meantime, every head of every network should be asking themselves why they don’t have a woman helming a talk show.
Have you already started thinking about what you want to do with your time guest-hosting The Daily Show?
Yeah, I’ve already been talking to the EP over there, Jen Flanz. We’ve been communicating about what I’d love to try, what I’d love to do. And I have a week there so I’m definitely going to try some stuff. I’m gonna go have fun and bring it.
And it seems like you haven’t been shy about the fact that you would want the gig on a permanent basis if it was offered to you.
Yeah, I mean, we’re definitely going to have conversations about that, for sure.
When Jon Stewart stepped down, I remember they were going after all these people like Amy Schumer and Chris Rock who didn’t want it, maybe because they felt like it was too limiting or it was going to tie them down or they wouldn’t be able to tour. And that’s why Trevor Noah ended up leaving as well, because he felt like it was limiting him in some way. But you don’t feel that way?
Listen, it’s a seven-year job. It’s a seven-year itch. I quit Chelsea Lately after seven years. Trevor quit after seven years. I’m pretty sure James Corden has done seven or close to that. When you go hard like that, that’s how long that job is, if you handle it the right way. When I did Chelsea Lately, I was on tour every year, I wrote four books within that seven-year time, followed by book tours. So I burned the candle at both ends. I’m not doing all of that again. I now know how to regulate and get the best out of myself. So yeah, it’s going into something with the right intention, and I have to want it. I want to work again, so that in and of itself will work because of my attitude.
At the same time, you’ve resisted the idea of going after that James Corden slot. Is that just because of the format that it’s tied to?
No, I mean, that’s on at 12:30 a.m. I’m not interested in that. I don’t care about that.
If you end up doing a talk show, one of the things that you might have to talk about is figures like Kanye West. And I know you’ve spoken out a little bit on social media against his antisemitism. I’m curious to talk to you, as a Jewish comedian, about what it’s been like to see this rise in antisemitism in the culture.
There’s 15 million Jews in this world left, so let that soak in. I didn’t know that. That’s something I learned recently and I was alarmed. It’s just so pointless and hateful to perpetuate that discriminatory language. It’s so hateful, it’s so unnecessary. Any Jewish person has had someone die in a concentration camp. How can you possibly deny something like that? It’s just painful, for obvious reasons. And the idea that Jews run Hollywood, it’s like, yeah, well guess what? Jews were ousted out of every business and they weren’t allowed to do anything because they were discriminated against. So they figured out what to do. So they run Hollywood. And guess what? French people run bakeries. And you know what? Swedish people run Ikea. So just get over yourself. Like, who gives a shit? That’s a skillset that they have. It’s working out for Kanye!
Maybe not anymore.
Not anymore. But it was!
I was curious to know what you thought about Dave Chappelle’s SNL monologue, because I feel like there are a lot of Jewish comedians who have been kind of hesitant to speak out against him.
Yeah, I mean, I didn’t love it. No, I don’t love that. Again, it’s unnecessary. What is the point of that? Why? Why is that necessary? There’s nothing more interesting to talk about or in a more clever way? I mean, it’s really hurtful. And Dave is someone who I respect a lot and is a friend of mine. So yeah, it’s hurtful.
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