Chelsea Handler is set to produce four ‘docu-comedies’ for Netflix and launch a talk show in 2016.The Canadian Press
Chelsea Handler is not fearless.
The comedian is often hailed for her daring sense of humour and apparent lack of concern about offending anyone. In her new stand-up special, Uganda Be Kidding Me Live, which premiered Friday on Netflix, she held nothing back in detailing a recent trip to Africa – including her uncontrollable bowel movements.
But the 39-year-old former Chelsea Lately host says she gets scared all the time.
"Fear is part of my life. I've just agreed to be in bed with it. I get nervous and then I go and conquer it because it feel like I have to," she said in a telephone interview. "I could never walk away from something because I'm scared. It's just not in my DNA."
The special is the first part of a landmark deal Handler signed with Netflix after wrapping up her hit late-night show on E! earlier this year. She is also set to produce four "docu-comedies" for the streaming video provider and launch a talk show in 2016.
Filmed in Chicago on the final stop of her Uganda Be Kidding Me tour to promote her book of the same title, the special is the first of its kind for Handler.
"When I was on E!, I was like, 'Don't we have enough of me going around?' I didn't want to add my face to more television than necessary. I think I got sick of myself a long time ago, so I was a little sensitive of having myself be everywhere at once," she said.
Handler has been doing stand-up since she was in her early 20s, but her breakout moment arrived in 2002 on Oxygen's all-female practical joke reality show Girls Behaving Badly. She launched Chelsea Lately in 2007 and has published several comic memoirs including My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands and Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea.
In her latest book, she chronicles not only her safari trip to Africa but her travels all over the globe, including kayaking in the Bahamas and escaping from a German hospital on crutches.
"I'm very reckless physically. I was in a Vespa accident in Majorca," she recalled. "I'm so used to getting hurt that I got back on my Vespa and rode around for the next two hours. The other girl complained the entire trip because we fell off the Vespa after something hit us. My feet were messed up, my arm. I still have three new scars from that accident."
She mused that her daredevil instincts come from growing up with brothers in New Jersey.
"I think my brothers always instilled in me I was the fun one. I was the cool one because I would do whatever they did," she said. "My other sister was a bit more timid, a little bit [more shy]. She wasn't as adventurous as I am … Maybe it was a way to get attention and a way for people to think I was cool and it just stuck with me."
Handler's special also touches on the more ridiculous elements of her life now that she is so successful. For example, her assistant commissions a private jet for Handler's dogs to join her on vacation in Whistler, B.C.
But she tries to shed the glamorous life while travelling, she said.
"I want to carry my bags. I want to check my own luggage. I want to take care of the things in life that most people have to deal with," she said. "I want to learn how to charge my phone. The dumbest stuff that's embarrassing to admit that you don't know how to do, I need to do it again."
Netflix was her No. 1 choice for a new platform for her comedy, she said, because "they're cool and they're forward-thinking and they're taking over the world."
Handler has just begun brainstorming for the four docu-comedy specials she is set to produce. While she hasn't nailed down the specifics, she sees them as funny documentaries with her as the "fish out of water."
As for her talk show, set to debut on Netflix in 2016, she said they haven't figured out the formula yet.
Ideally, she said she would like three episodes to land on Netflix every Monday. One might be her doing "snake immersion therapy" to get over her fear of snakes, the other might be her going diving with sharks, and the third could be a roundup of the week's global, political and celebrity news.
"I'm not interested in talking about celebrities on a nightly basis. I want something for everybody. I want to broaden my group of watchers. I want people that haven't seen me before in different countries to be able to relate. I want it to have some sort of educational value," she said.
"I want to do something that nobody has done before. Everybody was predicting what I was going to do, and I'm like, 'I'm not going to do anything that anyone thinks I'm going to do.' I never do."