Chelsea Handler
(7 of 7)
She shows them off with pride, drawing attention to the Botero sculpture, the Weems painting, the rain-forest showers, the custom-made Kyle Bunting cowhide rugs. This house, the private planes, the Bentley--these are the perquisites of her success, of course, in communicating with her audience of young women and then selling them, in various formats, her products. This luxury has become increasingly the norm for Handler. Like everything else in her life, she uses it as material: "I can't believe people know how much money I make. I'm not that kind of Jew. But then when I saw I was on the Forbes list, I was like, Maybe I am that kind of Jew."
Yet as we walk around her house--her dog Chunk, a half-German-shepherd, half-chow-chow rescue dog that Handler also brings to the office, loyally at her heels--it is clear just how far she has come from Livingston and from a 22-year-old wannabe starlet videotaping her own jokes. She is the Establishment now. She employs 250 people on her various staffs, is the decisionmaker in a media empire that generates millions for her parent companies and for her and lives in a mansion grander than those of the celebutantes Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardashian, whom she mocks on her show. She now has, in other words, something to lose.
When I ask if she may be more careful now that she is one of the haves, she shrugs. "I don't think I'm more mellow now. Well, maybe I'm more mellow, but I'm also more high-strung. I'm never going to not talk about something because of who I am. I'm always going to be the aggressor. There are two things I won't talk about: ugly babies or people who are dying."
She adds that she will never show her genitalia in public. "If I do, then it will be by accident. I'm not a Kardashian."
Before I leave, she asks me what happened with the woman who was so angry at me. I told her that the magazine, not this one, did correct a minor error in the story.
"See?" she says. "I told you. You're a terrible journalist."
She opens her front door to show me out. For a moment, she is uncharacteristically silent. And then, as if remembering her vow to continue to be an equal-opportunity offender, she says, "Now go outside and lie down in my driveway like the dog that you are."