Chelsea Handler
Chelsea Handler is an actor, born 1975.
Chelsea Handler built a television career on a slightly unfashionable premise: that a woman could be the rudest person in the room and host the room anyway. Chelsea Lately ran on E! from 2007 to 2014 and was structurally cleverer than it looked, a nightly show whose centre was a comedians' round table rather than a monologue, so the jokes came fast and the guest chair mattered less than the panel.
Stand-up is the base of everything she does, and writing is the other half. Her books, Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang among them, are where the voice is least filtered by a network, and they are the reason the audience follows her between formats. At Netflix she used the freedom to make the documentary series Chelsea Does and then a talk show that tried to go global; neither found the shape Lately had.
Her acting credits are consistent in a way that tells you how the industry reads her: the acidic friend, the unimpressed mother, the woman with terrible advice. Trish in This Means War, Mrs. Beck in Hop, Joy DeSantis in Fun Size, Barb in Prom Dates. She is good at all of it, and it is still a narrow use of a performer whose real instrument is timing in front of a live audience.
Movies (7)
TV (17)
- The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (2014)
- The Jennifer Hudson Show (2022)
- The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992)
- Chelsea (2016)
- A Little Late with Lilly Singh (2019)
- Chelsea Lately (2007)
- Who Do You Think You Are? (2010)
- Web Therapy (2008)
- Web Therapy (2011)
- Red Table Talk (2018)
- Whitney (2011)
- The Muppets (2015)
- The Gong Show (2017)
- Mark Twain Prize (1999)
- Password (2022)
- The Greg Behrendt Show (2006)
- Critics Choice Awards (2001)
Books (1)
Where to start with Chelsea Handler
Go to Chelsea Lately first, and specifically to the round-table segments, which have aged best: four comedians talking over each other about nothing, a format American late night has largely forgotten how to run.
Chelsea is the Netflix follow-up, more ambitious and less funny, useful mainly for watching a host try to outgrow her own format.
For the acting, This Means War and Fun Size give her the most room, and Prom Dates is the recent one where the persona has warmed. Web Therapy is the best of them, because improvised comedy is the closest screen equivalent to her stand-up muscle.
Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang is the book to read if you want the voice with no network standing behind it, and The Roast of Tom Brady is her at her most characteristic, which will either delight or repel you.