Interview: Chelsea Handler takes quickly to light-but-serious Netflix chat show
Actress and comedienne at home with edgy, irreverent format that mixes pop culture, celebrities, and world news and is beamed to 190 countries. She’s learned not to be afraid to ask questions of heavyweight guests
Chelsea Handler walked on set to enthusiastic applause, accompanied by her furry dog Chunk, wearing a snug vintage T-shirt tucked into high-waisted suede trousers, and five-inch pencil heels. Without skipping a beat, she launched right into her monologue, segued into a chat with guests Jay Leno and Gillian Jacobs, asked consumer protection chief Richard Cordray about how to avoid being scammed by mortgage companies, and introduced a fun segment about renting her house on Airbnb to a colourful family from the Philippines. A quick 30 minutes later, that was another episode of Chelsea, her new Netflix talk show, wrapped and ready to go.
The show broke ground in a number of ways when it launched in May. It was the first current affairs-type show from Netflix, which is best known for its wildly popular original shows such as Orange is the New Black and Narcos, as well as for its vast offering of films and previously aired series.
Like other popular talk show hosts – Jimmy Fallon, Conan O’Brien and Stephen Colbert – Handler weaves in celebrity interviews with current affairs and personal slice-of-life segments. Given her multipronged experience – she’s a best-selling author, comedienne, actress – her new role seems especially well suited to her: she has a natural curiosity, is quick on her feet, makes people feel at ease.
“I wanted to take my time and let my ideas marinate and figure out which direction I wanted to head,” Handler says about her show shortly after the taping ended, in her dressing room on the Sony studios lot in Los Angeles.
This is not her first go-around with Netflix: she previously did a four-part series for the global streaming service called Chelsea Does, where she took on subjects as disparate as marriage, racism, drugs and Silicon Valley, and in a tone she now describes as “more serious, thoughtful and thought-provoking”.
“I wanted to see how I could implement that into a nightly show, while still keeping the humour, keeping it light, making sure audiences stay interested,” she says.