Chelsea Handler is determined to make her return to late-night TV following her week-long hosting gig on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” In a chat with Variety, the 47-year-old, who previously fronted“Chelsea Lately” on E! and Netflix’s short-lived “Chelsea,” admitted that she’s keen on hosting her own show again because she has some “very strong and loud opinions” to share.
“Especially during a time like this, it’s nice for a lot of people to have a female voice out there,” the New Jersey native expressed. During her monologues on “Kimmel,” Chelsea touched on a handful of serious matters, including the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and, of course, Ghislaine Maxwell and R. Kelly’s prison sentencing.
“It’s so important to be represented and to be representing women and to remind people why it’s so important to be loud and to be strong and to be indefatigable about it and to get up and say something. There’s really nobody that can experience what it’s like to be a woman other than one of us. So having anybody else comment on that, white men’s opinions are pretty irrelevant.”
Not to mention, the current late-night lineup are all men, including Jimmy Fallon, James Corden, Trevor Noah, Seth Meyers, and Stephen Colbert. James has since announced that he’ll be stepping away from his Late Late Show on CBS next summer to pursuit other career paths, with sources claiming he’s looking to relocate back to the UK.
And while it seems rather likely that there’ll be an open position over at CBS, who will undoubtedly begin looking for a replacement soon, Chelsea says she hasn’t had any conversations with executives over at the network just yet. “I personally have not had any conversations with anyone other than my agents, and they were just testing the waters to see how interested I was, so I haven’t talked to anyone directly about a specific slot,” the comedian shared.
“But yes, I am interested in getting back out there. So, I will be talking to all these people about what those opportunities look like and if that is the right spot for me. I will consider it when the conversation matches my interest level.”
RELATED: Gov. Andrew Cuomo Responds To Chelsea Handler After Admitting Her Crush On Him & Being Ghosted
Chelsea, who has also expressed an interest in potentially rebooting her former E! chat show “Chelsea Lately” under a new name “Chelsea Later,” has seen men continue to dominate the talk show field, having assumed there would be more women taking charge.
“I thought I made a real dent by doing my show and proving to people that you can be a woman and host a late-night show, but it seems like people need to be reminded one more time,” she added. “And I might be that person to remind them.”