TV's New Late-night Host May Be Too Hot to Handler

• Jul 16, 2007 04:00 AM ET
• by damian holbrook

The boys of late night get some brassy company tonight at 11:30 pm/ET when former Girls Behaving Badly hellcat Chelsea Handler unleashes E!'s Chelsea Lately, her new nightly tart-tongued attack on the increasingly sordid world of celebrity news. We rang her up for the lowdown on what to expect.

TV Guide: So how does this show work?
Chelsea Handler: We have a roundtable setup and we'll be [looking at] gossip and what's going on in the pop-culture world, depending on what's happened that day. Like if Paris Hilton goes back to jail three or four times in one afternoon. [Laughs]

TV Guide: Like a threesome between Entertainment Tonight, The Daily Show and Colbert.
Handler: It's definitely a confluence of all those shows. We do want people to get information... but in a different format. It's going to be a rotating cast of [guest commentators], like on Howard Stern's show.

TV Guide: How are you going to maintain this schedule and keep your party-girl ways?
Handler: We tape during the day [and] I'll be done early in the night, so I can still go out with my girls and be in bed at a decent hour.

TV Guide: Guess you wouldn't want that job on The View?
Handler: No! [Laughs] I can't do something like that every day. I mean, it's early in the morning and getting into it with Elisabeth Hasselbeck every single day would be a job in and of itself.

TV Guide: And no red-carpet gigs?
Handler: Oh, my god, I could never do that. [You] have to be nice to the celebrities so you can get the interview... and I'm not going to pretend that some of them aren't ridiculous.

TV Guide: Like who?
Handler: Denise Richards is pretty ridiculous. Let me think.... Teri Hatcher. Obviously Paris, Britney... and Angelina Jolie is open territory! [Laughs]

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