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After a turbulent 17 months helming Netflix’s first ever talk show, Chelsea Handler is calling it quits. The feisty blonde comedienne took to Twitter this evening to announce that she has “decided not to return for another season of Chelsea” and, instead, “devote as much time as I can to becoming a more knowledgable and engaged citizen.” (For what it’s worth, The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that “the streaming giant has canceled its first talk show after a two-season run.”)
Here’s her statement in full:
The final episode of Chelsea Handler’s popular E! talk show, Chelsea Lately, aired in August of 2014, after the vodka-soaked funny lady announced that she’d be taking her talents to Netflix in a $10 million deal. It took nearly two years for the show — an eternity in pop culture time — to make it back to the air; Chelsea first aired on May 11, 2016. It was fairly clear from the outset that things were not going well in front of the camera or behind the scenes; the first week of the show featured a vaguely racist incident involving one of her guests, and Chelsea fired her showrunner after just three weeks.
By the time fall rolled around, things had not improved. Decider’s Scott Porch wrote at the time, “What’s the problem with Netflix’s Chelsea? Pretty much everything.” The show rebounded a bit, creatively speaking, in the weeks before the presidential election, but Handler emerged after Trump’s victory a bit of a broken person. She wept openly on her show, and struggled in her attempts to transform her show into a more politically woke affair (a la Sam Bee).
When Chelsea returned for its second season, the show was cut back from a thrice weekly affair to a single hour, and the show was derailed by a plagiarism scandal.
Fans of Chelsea, all is not lost. As part of her massive tweet, she announced that new episodes of her show will continue to stream on Netflix throughout the end of the year.
