Chelsea Handler wasn’t pleased with Louis C.K. or Aziz Ansari’s recent returns to the stage over the past few weeks.
The longtime stand-up comic and entertainer told HuffPost that the two missed out on the chance to do the “only thing they have to do.”
“They have to address what happened. People want to talk about it,” she said in a phone interview last week. “You can’t just ignore and throw it under the rug. You have to talk about what you’ve learned, where you’ve come from and where you are now.”
Louis C.K. was accused of unwanted sexual advances by multiple women in November, some of whom said he masturbated in front of them. The comedian later accepted responsibility for his sexual misconduct.
In January, Ansari was accused of sexual assault by an unnamed woman, an encounter the comedian said was “completely consensual.”
Handler added, “I think that’s the issue everyone has with it and why it’s such a big deal. You can’t just come back and act like nothing happened ― you did a bad thing ― depending on which person you’re talking about. It’s about taking responsibility, ultimately.”
“You can’t just come back and act like nothing happened ― you did a bad thing.”
- Chelsea Handler
Handler has mainly stayed away from performing since she quit her Netflix show, “Chelsea,” back in October 2017. She said she’s spent the last year trying to get both women and people of color elected into office.
She occasionally spars with the Trumps on Twitter, but told HuffPost that if she came face to face with any of them, she wouldn’t say a word.
“What would be the point of speaking to somebody like that?” Handler said. “There are children in cages ― there are 12,000 children at our border that have been separated from their families and [Trump’s] denying that people died in Puerto Rico. We have a monster running our country and his whole family is a bunch of monsters.”
Handler added that she couldn’t care less about Donald Trump Jr., who recently shared a sexist, suggestive tweet in response to one of Handler’s tweets about him.
“I’ll care about [him] when he’s in jail,” she said. Same goes for the president, who, the entertainer says, needs to be impeached and removed from office because he’s not fit for the job.
“They should’ve removed him a long time ago for the way he uses his Twitter, the language that he uses and the violence that he invokes,” Handler said. “His cabinet has responsibilities to this country ― not to the Republican party.”
“We have a monster running our country and his whole family is a bunch of monsters.”
- Chelsea Handler
Handler says she uses cannabis to cope with the current administration.
“Drinking when you’re angry is no fun so I needed another outlet,” she said. “There are so many times when I just don’t want to drink every night ― if I have a dinner or if I’m going out. Sometimes I’ll just take an edible and, you know, not drink. That was never part of my vocabulary before.”
Handler is so passionate about her newfound, well, passion that she’s going on a seven-stop speaking tour in Canada with Civilized, a cannabis lifestyle publication. She’ll discuss topics like weed, culture and political activism in a town hall setting, just before recreational marijuana officially becomes legal in October.
“I’m always looking for an excuse to spend more time in Canada, so this is a great one,” Handler said, later closing her interview with a plea. “I’m waiting for an invitation for dual Canadian citizenship ― so get that out there too.”
Before You Go
