Don't worry — kinder, gentler Chelsea Handler is still cynical

Comedian Chelsea Handler once said of “Chelsea Lately!”, her late-night E! talk show, “The worse the guests are, the more pathetic they are, the funnier the show is.”

Not surprising, maybe, from someone who also was a cast member on Oxygen’s hidden camera reality show, “Girls Behaving Badly.”

The television host-actor-author-producer built her fame on comedy routines and behavior crossing lines of what might be considered socially appropriate.

But that was then, this is now. These days, Handler said from a recent tour stop in Australia, she’s been on a journey to become “a better, kinder, gentler human being.”

The journey currently includes Handler’s “Life Will Be the Death of Me” Stand-Up Comedy Tour, making a Nov. 1 stop at Pittsburgh’s Byham Theater.

You too

“Life Will Be the Death of Me: … and you too!” is the title of the 2019 New York Times best-seller that Amazon calls the “funny, sad, super-honest, all-true story of Chelsea Handler’s year of self-discovery.”

It’s something that’s been brewing for a long time.

“I wanted to be more thoughtful about what I was putting out there in the world,” Handler says.

“My older brother died when I was 9, and I never really dealt with that anger and outrage,” she says. “The (2016) election was a trigger for me. Of course, I was outraged about that, but it wasn’t just that.”

Living in California, the land of “chakras and therapy,” the New Jersey native says, “I never thought I needed therapy, I thought I was too smart for therapy. But when I went to therapy the first time, it broke open my whole world.

“Now I’m trying to harness that outrage and turn it into something positive and be a more normal, calm person.”

More to her

There was always more to Handler than the out-there, inappropriate public personality who also wrote the 2008 New York Times best-seller, “Are You Out There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea,” a collection of humorous essays based on her experiences.

She’s long been an advocate for human rights and LGBTQ equality, and has spoken out on a number of other social issues.

She explored white privilege in the documentary “Hello, Privilege. It’s Me, Chelsea.” Released Sept. 13 on Netflix, “Hello, Privilege” includes a story of Handler being caught three times with drugs with her high school boyfriend, who is black. Each time, he was arrested and she was sent home.

“I was white, I was pretty, and I had a big mouth and for some reason, that was rewarded in Hollywood,” she says in the documentary. “I’m clearly the beneficiary of white privilege, and I want to know what my responsibility is moving forward in the world that we live in today where race is concerned.”

Back to her fans

Her current stand-up comedy tour was preceded by a sit-down tour of the U.S. and Canada that included town hall-style conversations centering on social and political activism.

All of that has made her comedy sharper, she says.

“I haven’t done a stand-up tour in about five or six years,” she says. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen my fans up close and personal.”

Fans of the old Chelsea shouldn’t worry that she’s lost her edge, though.

They might hear a story about her leaving a 30-minute meditation session and immediately getting into a fight with a 6-year-old in an airport lounge.

“There’s a lot of levity and lack of self-judgment (in the current show), but it’s still very cynic-friendly,” she says. “I’m still a very cynical person.”