Chelsea Handler has been making fans laugh for more than two decades, becoming a fixture on the American comedy scene. Raw, unfiltered, and casually candid, she’s left little to the imagination when recounting her wild personal life, whether it’s her brief fling with rapper-turned-mogul 50 Cent, the scandalous details behind one of her higher-profile breakups, or her penchant for celebrating her birthdays by skiing topless (until acquiescing to her embarrassed nephews’ pleas to knock it off).

Meanwhile, she’s cut a wide swath through the entertainment industry, hosting her own talk show — twice — along with being a six-time New York Times bestselling author, hosting award shows (in 2025, she emceed the Critics Choice Awards for the third consecutive time) and starring in her own comedy specials. Her latest Netflix standup outing is “The Feeling,” in which she riffs on subjects ranging from a disastrous Thanksgiving with family to her encounter with controversial comedian Bill Cosby. She also hosts her own podcast, “Dear Chelsea.”

Through it all, she’s remained unapologetically herself — and her fans just keep on loving her for it. Read on for a look at Chelsea Handler’s transformation.

It’s no stretch to describe Chelsea Handler’s heritage as diverse. Her mother, Rita, was a Mormon of German descent, while her father, Seymour, was an American-born Ashkenazi Jew. While speaking at the 2020 MAKERS Conference (as reported by Yahoo! Life), she told the audience, “I grew up as a Jew and a Mormon.” While she experienced both religions while growing up, once she was old enough to make her own determination, it was her dad’s faith that she ultimately embraced. “I chose Jewish obviously,” she said, characterizing the rejected religion with her trademark candor. “Mormonism is so ridiculous,” she added.

Her mother was born in Germany, immigrating to the U.S. at age 19, a fact that led Handler to discover some uncomfortable information about that side of her family when she appeared in a 2013 edition of a TV series about celebrity ancestry, “Who Do You Think You Are?” After delving into her mother’s family history, Handler found out her grandfather was a Nazi soldier during World War II. “My German grandma definitely spoke about her life during the war way more than my grandfather did,” she recalled in the episode, via E! News. “He never spoke about it.”

Born in 1975, Chelsea Handler was the youngest of six children. She was just nine years old when, in 1984, her oldest sibling, Chet, died accidentally while hiking. “Chet, who was 21, fell off a cliff. His death was devastating,” Handler told the Wall Street Journal.

As Handler revealed in an interview with USA Today in 2019, her nine-year-old self perceived her big brother as “kind of my protector, kind of a father figure, a big brother, a crush, your first boyfriend,” she told the outlet. Meanwhile, she also recalled that her father had been left desolate by losing his son, which in turn saddened her even further. “I didn’t like seeing my father weak. I’d already lost my brother; I couldn’t lose my dad too, and I did,” she said. “My dad never recovered.”

It wasn’t until years later, when she began undergoing therapy that Handler came to understand that she’d never fully coped with her brother’s death, instead pushing all thoughts of him out of her mind to avoid the pain of her reality. This, she now realized, had left her with a lifelong aversion to vulnerability. “I dealt with it by just, if anybody talked about Chet or mentioned him, I’d just leave the room,” she explained. “I’d get on my bike, and I’d ride my bike for hours around the neighborhood. I could cry on my bike, but I wouldn’t let anyone see me cry in person.”

As a teenager, Chelsea Handler experienced some success competing in beauty pageants in New Jersey, and at age 19, left home for Los Angeles to pursue a career in showbiz. Initially, she stayed with her aunt and uncle, who lived in Bel Air. “They had two, tiny two-bedroom houses for nine kids, four dogs and, at one point, a bat,” she recalled for the Wall Street Journal. “It was pandemonium. After three months, I left and found a waitressing job.”

After being in LA for two years, 21-year-old Handler was arrested for driving under the influence. After spending 24 hours in jail, she was ordered by a judge to attend alcohol education classes. At one point, she was required to discuss the circumstances of her arrest with the rest of the class. As she recounted what had taken place, she couldn’t help but make it funny. “The guy running the class was like, ‘Okay, this is not a standup routine,'” Handler said during an interview with Vulture. 

Interviewed for HLN, she was stunned by the positive response she received from the other “students” in the class. “People came up to me and like, ‘You’re really funny,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I think I am, too,'” she recalled. Given that her attempts at becoming an actor had borne little fruit, she suddenly saw another path to success in the entertainment industry: standup comedy.

Slowly and steadily, Chelsea Handler began developing a following in LA comedy clubs. This opened the door to television, and she appeared in a few TV shows, including guest spots in “The Practice,” “The Bernie Mac Show,” and, ironically, playing a drunk driver in “Cops” spoof “Reno 911!”

Still, it was standup, not television, that paid the bills. As she told the Wall Street Journal, “I worked my ass off for five years. When I was around 26, I made it to Montreal’s Just for Laughs comedy festival, a huge deal.” Her set, however, did not go over well. “I bombed,” she admitted. Back in LA, though, her agent set up a showcase gig upon her return, with an NBC executive in the audience. “The next day, NBC gave me a development deal and handed me a check for $100,000,” she said. “All of this happened in 72 hours.”

She landed her highest-profile gig to date shortly after when she was tapped to host “On the Lot,” a TV competition series for aspiring filmmakers from “Survivor” producer Mark Burnett and director Steven Spielberg. Ratings were dismal, growing smaller each week until the show was eventually axed. Handler, however, left after the debut episode and was replaced by Adrianna Costa. “I quit that show because I smelled the disaster happening before it did,” she said, as reported by TV Series Finale, maintaining that quitting ranks among her wisest decisions. “Somebody said, ‘You can’t quit a Steven Spielberg show, you can’t quit a Mark Burnett production.’ Watch me, watch me quit.”

Immediately after quitting “On the Lot,” Chelsea Handler’s NBC deal led to “The Chelsea Handler Show,” a sketch comedy series for the NBCUniversal-owned E! network. Following a format similar to the wildly popular “Chappelle’s Show,” Handler combined her standup comedy with sketches. While that show was not a success, E! president Ted Harbert — whom Handler had begun dating — decided sketches were not her forte and decided she should lean into her own personality. As a result, “Chelsea Lately” was born.

Of course, a late-night cable show couldn’t compete with network TV’s late-night big boys such as “SNL” star-turned-“Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon and “Late Night” legend David Letterman, and Handler wasn’t landing the A-list guests those shows could command — at least at first. However, she took that in stride while carving out her own space. “The worse the guests are, the more pathetic they are, the funnier the show is,” she explained during an interview with W Magazine. Night after night, though, the popularity of “Chelsea Lately” soared. Comedian Heather McDonald, a regular on the show, offered her theory on why viewers connected with Handler. “She’s the king of drunk, hot blondes,” McDonald told Entertainment Weekly. “They’ve been wandering the earth, they’ve never had a leader, until Chelsea arrived with her big boobs and long hair and sassy attitude, and they’re like, ‘She’s me!'”

The show ran for seven seasons until its cancellation in 2014. “I myself am more surprised than anyone that I was able to hold down a job for seven years, and it was a fantastic seven years,” said Handler in a statement to Variety. “I will always look back at my time on E! as most people look back at their time in college. I’m glad I went.”

While Chelsea Handler made a name for herself on the stages of comedy clubs, she also embarked on a sideline as an author. In 2005, her first book was published, “My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One Night Stands,” in which she shared raucous anecdotes about dating. She followed that up with “Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea,” which arrived in 2008. She followed that up with several more: “Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang” (published in 2011); “Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me” (2012); “Life Will Be the Death of Me: … And You Too!” (2020); and “I’ll Have What She’s Having,” released in early 2025.

Interviewed for PureWow, Handler explained that her process of writing a book is very different from the other writing she does and tends to be a lot more sporadic. “I have no creative structure,” she said. “It’s very loose. And when I’m in the mood to write, I write.”

According to Handler, each of her books has been a sort of snapshot in time, reflecting a particular point in her life’s journey. “I think all of my books are representative of where I am in my life at that time,” she told Newsweek.

While Chelsea Handler’s relationship with E! head honcho Ted Harbert coincided with her arrival at the network, ultimately, “Chelsea Lately” outlasted their romance. Handler was the one who pulled the plug in 2010, and Harbert reportedly took the breakup hard. In a 2012 interview with Marie Claire, Handler conceded that it was their inability to separate their professional and personal lives that led to their split. “I would come home from work, and Ted would be like, ‘Do you want to watch your show?’ and I’d be like, ‘No, I just came from my show. That’s the last thing I’d want to do,'” she said. “That was the reason it didn’t work out, ultimately. I think.”

More than a decade later, though, Handler offered another reason for the breakup. Appearing on Andy Cohen’s SiriusXM talk show, she explained that she and a boyfriend had a threesome with another woman. “I was very turned on by this woman … I ended up hooking up with her several times without the guy that I was dating. That’s when I knew it was time to break up with the guy.” She went further by identifying that boyfriend. “His name is Ted Harbert,” she added.

Handler backtracked during a subsequent appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” revealing Harbert had sent her a text telling her to stop dishing out intimate details of his personal life. “So I really want to clarify, I want to go on the record that is not why our relationship ended,” she said.

In 2007, Chelsea Handler launched her own production company, Borderline Amazing Productions, which produced “Chelsea Lately” and also became the name for her own publishing imprint. In 2010, Borderline Amazing produced “Pretty Wild,” an E! reality show following a trio of teenage LA socialites. In 2011, she renewed her deal with E! through to 2014, which also gave E! and NBCUniversal a first-look deal at projects produced by her company. The first project to emerge from that deal arrived in 2012 when she produced a new talk show hosted by fellow female standup Whitney Cummings (which was unfortunately canceled after a brief four-month run). 

The following year, she produced another talk show for E!, “Hello Ross,” hosted by erstwhile “Tonight Show” personality Ross Matthews, aka Ross the Intern. That show fared better, running for two seasons before its cancellation, which reportedly had to do with Handler’s 2014 exit from E! Another show to bear Handler’s imprint as producer was “The Josh Wolf Show” for CMT.

Meanwhile, Handler also produced some shows that never made it off the ground. After signing a new first-look development deal with NBCUniversal in 2018, a prospective Marvel animated superhero series, “Tigra & Dazzler,” wound up being scrapped. In 2020, she sold the half-hour comedy “Blair” to HBO Max and another comedy, “Wiped Out,” to Peacock; five years later, both are still in development, and may or may not see the light of day.

While still hosting “Chelsea Lately,” Chelsea Handler produced a sitcom for NBC, loosely based on her book, “Are You There, Vodka, It’s Me, Chelsea.” The sitcom — “Are You There, Chelsea?” — focused on Handler’s hard-drinking, promiscuous persona. Because of her other commitments, Handler did not play the titular Chelsea, who instead was portrayed by “That ’70s Show” alum Laura Prepon. Handler did have a role on the show, however, playing against type as Chelsea’s judgmental and very pregnant older sister. “We want people to know that I’m part of the show but that this is the star of the show,” Handler explained during an appearance at the Television Critics Association winter press tour in early 2012, via Deadline. “But it’s Laura’s show ultimately … I’d love to be in it as often as possible, but I seriously don’t have the time.”

As for why the show’s title dropped “Vodka,” Handler broke down the network’s rationale. “Not everyone is into alcohol as much as I am,” she remarked. “So I think the network wanted people to [embrace] the show whether or not they had as big a drinking problem as I do.”

Reviews were lukewarm, with some critics noting that Handler’s presence on the show only served to undercut Prepon. While ratings were solid at first, viewership quickly plummeted. The show was canceled after just 12 episodes. 

In 2014, the same year that “Chelsea Lately” ended, Chelsea Handler signed a deal with Netflix to launch the streamer’s first-ever talk show. Before that show arrived, she appeared in “Chelsea Does,” a series of four Netflix documentaries, with each tackling a different topic — marriage, racism, Silicon Valley, and drugs. In a 2015 interview, she envisioned her show as taking on a newsier approach than its predecessor. “I would like a healthy mix of everything that goes on around the world,” she said at the Code Media conference, as reported by Variety. Singling out ISIS and Syria as potential discussion topics, she shared her vision. “The well-roundedness of ’60 Minutes’ but faster, quicker, cooler,” she said, expressing her relief that she wouldn’t be hemmed in by the tabloid-level topics she was forced to cover on E! — particularly anything to do with the Kardashians. “I just don’t want to ever have to see that again,” she said. “I don’t care about that.”

More details about the show emerged in 2016 when Handler revealed the show would air three times per week, on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. She subsequently revealed the show’s title, “Chelsea.” Interviewed by Coveteur, Handler confessed that she didn’t see herself ever returning to traditional television; she’d gone all in with Netflix. “My future is with Netflix and Netflix is the future — streaming is where it’s at,” she said. “Hopefully, network television will never go away, but I feel like I’m sitting at the cool kids’ table; finally at the age of 41, this is the place to be.”

“Chelsea” debuted in May 2016 and ran for two seasons. However, “Chelsea” did not have the longevity of her previous talk show and, ended in 2017.

In 2021, Chelsea Handler began dating fellow comedian Jo Koy, with the two taking their relationship Instagram official in late September. They had known each other for some time but reconnected as friends before the friendship became more intimate that summer. When the two were interviewed together for The Hollywood Reporter, Koy said it was Handler who’d made the first move. “She basically asked me to kiss her,” Koy said, with Handler adding, “I said, ‘I think you have a crush on me, and if you do, you should do something about it and see what happens.'”

Sadly, the romance flamed out quickly. In July 2022, Handler took to Instagram to reveal that they’d broken up. “It is with a heavy heart to announce that we have decided together that it is best for us to take a break from our relationship right now,” she wrote in the caption. A source told People that friends of the two were hopeful that they’d be able to work things out and reconcile. “But if anything, it’s clear their relationship has changed them both for the better,” the source stated.

The final remnants of their relationship were on display in her 2022 standup comedy special, “Revolution.” Taped just about three weeks before their split, Koy had served as the special’s director.