In 2014 comedian Chelsea Handler surprised fans by announcing that she was ending her long-running talk show, “Chelsea Lately,” to pursue other TV projects, which subsequently meant she was also stepping away from the E! network.
The news took many by surprise considering that the 46-year-old was one of the highest-paid stars on the company’s roster, as she also worked as an executive producer on other E! shows such as “Pretty Wild,” “Love You, Mean It with Whitney Cummings,” and “Hello Ross,” to name a few.
While Chelsea was certainly not complaining about the money she was earning – with the New York Post naming her “one of the most overpaid TV stars” in 2012 – the blonde beauty felt uninspired by the routine of her day-to-day job and knew she wanted to do more than just interview celebrities and focus her attention on pop culture topics.
In a revealing 2016 interview with Business Insider, Chelsea earning a reported $12 million a year at E!, said she never felt challenged with her responsibilities at the network and eventually reached a point where everything felt tiresome.
“I loved my show on E! for a while and I had fun doing it, but I don’t think I respected the position that much and that’s ultimately why I wanted to leave,” she revealed.
“I didn’t really have a lot of respect for what I was doing, so it was hard for me to respect the job. And even though it was a silly job and who needs to respect it, at the end of the day you want to be doing something that you’re really proud of. And here I feel like I am doing something much different.”
That same year, Chelsea announced she was moving to Netflix after having inked a deal to front a new chat show on the streaming platform titled Chelsea. The company had huge plans to “revolutionize the talk show” space, and who better to bring on board than Chelsea, who had just ended her contract with E!.
This time around, she wasn’t constricted to interviewing celebrities and discussing pop culture news: Chelsea was free to talk about politics, travel across the world to interview “regular” people and investigate topics she felt passionate about, such as the benefits of using Ayahuasca.
While she was estimated to be taking home $12 million a year at E!, her position with the streaming firm, according to The Hollywood Reporter, earned her a little less with $10 million annually. Those numbers were still impressive, and Chelsea would’ve most likely been able to renegotiate her deal per season, but in 2017, Netflix shared in a statement that the chat show was not returning for a third run.
That’s right, after just two seasons, Netflix decided to pull the plug, with sources saying the production costs of the show in contrast to its regular viewership didn’t align — but that certainly didn’t mean they were done working with Chelsea.
The decision not to renew the program for a third run allowed her to think about her next career move. Chelsea knew she wanted to get away from the world of pop culture, and Netflix did feel like home, but for some reason, her content wasn’t resonating with its core audience.
Since then, Chelsea has worked with Netflix on a string of documentaries and limited TV shows, including Chelsea Does and Hello, Privilege. It’s Me, Chelsea.
She’s also returned to comedy, having aired her heavily-praised stand-up show Chelsea Handler: Evolution on HBO Max in October 2020. Her next major project will be producing the upcoming Hulu drama-comedy, Unspeakable.
Sometimes we have to take risks in life to realize our more significant purpose.