14 DAY TRIAL // In 2014, comedienne Chelsea Handler left E! after a 7-year partnership known as the talk show Chelsea Lately. She will be getting a different talk show in 2016, and in the meantime, she’s still talking about her decision to part ways with her former employer and how she lost all respect for her previous job.
Not that she had that much to begin with, she says in a new chat with The Wrap, which you will find embedded below in full.
E! was too low-brow for Chelsea
Following reports that she was fired because she had asked for more money than she was worth, Handler came forward to say that she’d grown tired of doing only celebrity interviews on her show, saying that this wasn’t what she’d signed up for.
In following interviews, she would elaborate on that, even saying that the E! job was dumbing her down and that she no longer liked the person she’d become, so she had to leave.
E! bosses never addressed her claims publicly (they couldn’t have without coming across as desperate to fix their image), but insiders told the press that this was just Handler’s way of shutting down reports that she’d been let go.
In this new interview, she iterates all this, adding that she wanted to do more with her show than just interview celebrities, but no one wanted to tune in.
“It was E! I don’t have a lot of respect for them,” she says. “It was a great opportunity to give my friends jobs, it was a great experience and I’m grateful and I appreciate it but it was time to move on. I wanted to talk about things other than Lindsay Lohan, there was only so much I could take.”
“I want to be somewhere where I respect the people I’m working with,” Chelsea says.
To her former bosses’ credit, the comedienne adds that she was told she could do whatever she wanted on her show. On the downside, she discovered that even if she did, no one would tune in, because people only watch E! for the celebrities.
Looking forward to the new gig
Hopefully, Chelsea’s next gig will make all this right. By the sound of it, she was downright miserable at her previous job because the novelty of being able to give her friends jobs wore off pretty quickly.
Ironically, Chelsea stuck with the show for 7 years, so while she’s trying to make it sound as if she became stuck in a rut soon and was then forced of thinking of exit strategies, in reality, she was comfortable with her job for quite some time.
Rumor online has it that her new gig will also see her interviewing celebrities, though she tries to make it sound as if she’ll be doing more, including shows on more important topics, like politics and environmental issues.
We’ll see next year. The only thing certain right now is that she’s looking forward to this next project.
