Chelsea Handler Wants to Take Responsibility for Your Good Time

Chelsea Handler Wants to
Take Responsibility for
Your Good Time

Little Big Bitch Tour
Comes to the Santa Barbara Bowl 

by Leslie Dinaberg | August 8, 2024

A powerful force of femme long before “brat summer” started trending, when comedian, television host, six-time New York Times best-selling author, and advocate Chelsea Handler returns to the Santa Barbara Bowl on Saturday, August 17, it’ll be a homecoming of sorts for the multi-pronged entertainer. 

“I was the first opener of the Santa Barbara Bowl when they returned from COVID, and I had never played the Santa Barbara Bowl before,” shared Handler, who graciously interrupted her vacation in Port de Sóller, Majorca to speak to me on the phone. “I am so excited to come back there because that is such a special place. … I have just been very fortunate that I’m even coming back and that I get to be so close to home [in Los Angeles] and then I get to have a big weekend in Santa Barbara with all my friends from L.A. that are gonna come up.” 

She added, “I’m really looking forward to coming back and spreading some good vibrations.” 

Spreading good vibrations is something she’s good at. From her early career as an actress and in stand-up, to a seven-year run as the host of E!’s top-rated Chelsea Lately from 2007 to 2014 — a tenure in which she was the only female late-night talk show host on-air — to her documentary series Chelsea Does, her Netflix talk show Chelsea, her hilarious Instagram account, and her iHeartRadio advice podcast Dear Chelsea, Handler’s been making us laugh on just about every platform imaginable.

About two minutes into our conversation, my cheeks already hurt from laughing as I asked Handler to describe, in her own words, what exactly she does for a living. 

“Every time I have to fill that out in some sort of paperwork, I’m always like, ‘What am I?’ ” she laughs. “I don’t know; I vacillate back and forth between author and comedian. I don’t know, performer, entertainer. I don’t know. I think because I bounce around with so many things, I don’t feel like I do one thing specifically. I kind of focus on what I’m doing in the moment. But then I think about what I’m doing in the moment, and I’m writing about it. I just finished my seventh book, I’m on tour, I’m on vacation, and I’m going back to stand-up in a few days. So, I guess I don’t know how I would self-describe — I think it’s probably best that I don’t know how to self-describe.”

And how close is her real personality to the person we’ll see on her Little Big Bitch stand-up tour?

“I think it’s pretty close. I’m pretty real and true to who I am and my personality. I’m not putting on any airs or trying to pretend to be something that I’m not. And I hate that,” says Handler, who will add a residency at the Cosmopolitan in Vegas to her résumé a couple of weeks after her show in Santa Barbara.

“I have a reputation that precedes me for sure. But I am very close to who you see. I’m outspoken, and I love life, and I love my friends, and I love to have a good time. I love to work hard, and I like to be a multi-hyphenate. I like to keep myself interested in what I’m doing. And I don’t like to have to do anything that I don’t really feel passionate about.”

She found her way to comedy in what has to be the most L.A. story of all time: She got arrested for drunk driving.

“I got a DUI when I was 21 years old, the week after I turned 21,” she confirms. She attended the mandatory classes but kept hiding in the back of the class.

“I was so scared of public speaking; I was determined to get out of this class without doing that speech. I will figure out a way to avoid this. And in the very last class, when I was like, ‘I’ve done it,’ then he called my name.”

She was forced to talk. “And I went up and I told my DUI story, which was pretty ridiculous. I called the cop racist — and we were both white. I spent 72 hours in the women’s prison, Sybil Brand in Los Angeles County, where they were trading tampons for ham and cheese sandwiches. And I was like, ‘Oh my God, they called me down.’ They’re like, ‘What job do you want? Do you want to make license plates? Do you want to work in the cafeteria?’ ” she laughs. 

“I said, ‘No, I’m not staying.’ ” But the computer system was down, and she was stuck for almost three days saying things like, “ ‘No, I’m not staying. I’m not permanent,’ and they were like, ‘That’s what everyone says.’ … So I went up to the biggest, toughest woman I saw. And I’m like, ‘Please reach out to me. I have money.’ And I slept under her bunk bed for two nights,” says Handler.

“So I was telling the story at the DUI class, which, by the way, I would like to point out, is a class that basically teaches you how to get out of your next DUI. I told this story, and then afterward, everyone said, I mean, even the guy from the class came up, and he’s like, ‘Okay, this is not a comedy club, like, wrap it up,’ ” she recalls.

“But I just loved the reaction I was getting. People were laughing, and it was a nice room full of people. And I left that class, and everyone just said, ‘You have to do stand-up, you have to.’ And the next week, I did my first set up at the Laugh Factory, which was three minutes long.”

Reflecting on that less-than-auspicious but oh-so-funny beginning, Handler says, “And so one of the worst decisions in my life turned into one of the best decisions of my life. There was a nice silver lining to a terrible thing I did. Getting a DUI, that’s obviously nothing anyone is proud of. But I would like to say that I have not had a DUI since, because I learned my lesson the first time, and you make the first time the last time.”

Like most beginning entertainers, Handler worked temp jobs, which she was admittedly terrible at (“I couldn’t even transfer a phone call,” she said), until things started to come together. “One of my first breaks was I got cast in The Practice [an early spin-off of Grey’s Anatomy] and I played a rape victim.” 

When the offer came, “I was on the phone with my sister. And I was probably asking for money because I was broke all the time; I was waitressing. And I would get fired for yelling at customers or telling people exactly what I thought — that didn’t go over well in that industry, either. And I was on the phone with my sister, and I’m like, ‘What if it doesn’t happen? Like, what if I don’t make it and, and I don’t become successful in this business.’ And she said, ‘It’s gonna happen; you’re not good at anything else.’ ”

Handler laughs, “She was right.” And she got the call for the TV show.

“It was one of those moments where I was like, ‘Okay, I’m on the right track.’ Don’t get so waylaid and be so catastrophic about everything. As long as you’re taking steps in the right direction, things will come together. They might not come together at the pace you desire. But when you’re set on something, it happens; you just keep going and moving and you get knocked down and then get back up. It sounds cliché, because it’s true.”

Of course, these days, she does her own writing and generates her own material. “Everything I do is very self-generated. And that allows you to have autonomy that you don’t get as somebody who’s cast in something,” says Handler. “So, it ended up being a real blessing in disguise, because I don’t get along with authority very well. So, the kind of doing what I want, when I want, is a better way for me to go through life than, you know, working for a company or an entity that’s giving me notes all the time.”

And does she ever want to slow down? As a long-established performer at age 49, Handler seems to be working much harder than most of her peers. 

“I would say I work really hard to also not work really hard for parts of the year, that when I work, I hit it hard,” she says. “And then I go to Whistler for two to three months in the winter and I get to come to my house in Spain, and I hang out here for a month or two a year, because spending time with my friends and my family and sharing all of these places with people that I love is super important to me, and would be meaningless without that.”

She continues, “I don’t ever come to my places and hang out by myself. I’m always inviting friends or family. And that was my dream, when I was a little girl: I just wanted to have a big life. And I wanted to be loud and leave my mark and be somebody that people could depend on. And that’s why stand-up is such a great kind of vocation for me because people are coming and they’re depending on you to provide a good time. And I take it very seriously. I take having fun very seriously. And so being on stage, it makes you the arbiter of everyone’s good time. And I love that responsibility.”

Chelsea Handler will be at the Santa Barbara Bowl (1122 N. Milpas St.) on Saturday, August 17. See sbbowl.org or chelseahandler.com for more information and tickets.