Chelsea Lately has been off the air for more than a decade, but if Chelsea Handler was still doing her late-night talk show, she knows the pop culture story she’d be talking about.
“Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni would probably be front and center. I mean, that story just will not go away,” the comedian told Yahoo Entertainment while promoting her Netflix special The Feeling.
Handler said “it’s unbelievable” that Baldoni’s and Lively’s legal disputes over It Ends With Us” are ongoing. “I just can’t believe it. I’ve already lost interest, actually, and it takes a lot to get me to lose interest,” she joked.
Handler is “open” to returning to late night if “the right opportunity presented” itself. The Dear Chelsea podcast host envisions a once-a-week program that is “more political” and “a lot less about pop culture.”
“But it would be a hybrid,” she explained. “I don’t want to only talk about politics. That’s not fun, either. So there has to be some levity, and it has to be about some of the ridiculous stories.”
However, Handler said there would be one big difference now than when she was on E! years ago: “I wouldn’t go after young stars ever again. I would go after people who know better and are too old to be still screwing up.”
That mindset goes hand-in-hand with what’s been a transformative few years for the comedian. Handler recently turned 50 and said she’s in a “phase of injecting optimism and positivity and laughter and joyfulness” into her comedy.
If there was one thing she could tell her 30-year-old self, it would be that “it just keeps getting better.”
“Like everything. It sounds corny and it sounds cliché, but clichés are clichés because they’re true. You get more confident, you get more secure, and you give less f***s. Those are all true things. But the most important thing is that you become more present,” she said.
“When you start caring less about the future and less about the past, you are able to be present. And being in the present moment are the best providers of unadulterated bliss. Those are the best moments when you are really in them,” Handler continued. “I’m in my moments a lot more than I was in my 20s and 30s.”
For Handler, those moments might mean putting her phone away or choosing to be with a smaller circle of loved ones.
“Are you walking down the street on your phone? Because if you are, you’re doing two things badly,” she said.
“I didn’t realize the benefit of that until I was in my 40s. But it is a practice. And it is something that I hold myself to a higher standard to now because I understand what that means,” she said. “And that means, you know, when you get out of a conversation where two people are focused and intentional, and it doesn’t matter who it’s with, it could be with your gardener. That’s a better conversation than if you’re doing 15 things at once.”
Chelsea Handler: The Feeling is now streaming on Netflix.
