“If you’re thinking about having a baby – don’t,” reads a handwritten note Chelsea Handler scrawled to herself. It’s an important reminder, considering she’s going to be very busy with her new talk show set to stream on Netflix this May.
According to Variety, the program will be titled Chelsea and will be Netflix’s first-ever talk show. The program is part of Handler’s deal with Netflix, which also included her four-part documentary series Chelsea Does, and her stand-up special Uganda Be Kidding Me.
In the handwritten note, which Handler tweeted to fans as an announcement for the new show, Handler imparted some sage wisdom to herself that she should abide by while making the show and gave fans a taste of what the series would be like.
“You’ll be traveling around the world and learning new things, all courtesy of Netflix,” she writes. “Treat this as an opportunity to get the college education you forgot to get.”
She also wrote out her “dream guest list,” which includes Michelle Obama, the pope and, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s maid.
It seems this upcoming Netflix talk show could prove similar to Handler’s last talk show, Chelsea Lately, which was broadcast on E! from 2007 to 2014. On Chelsea Lately, Handler developed a brash, blunt and fairly unapologetic comedic presence, which shone through both in her short stand-up monologues and while interviewing celebrity guests.
For those who have witnessed Netflix’s evolution from a company that delivered DVDs to your door to one of the most prolific streaming services, the idea of a Netflix talk show is startling but not necessarily unexpected. Netflix has always had a knack for surprising us.
It’s ironic the service that made binge watching trendy is now slowing it down with a show that only releases three episodes a week. Variety reported on a study by Michael Nathanson, of the research boutique MoffettNathanson, writing that “in 2015, Netflix accounted for about half of the overall 3% decline in TV viewing time among U.S. audiences.”
Netflix took the power from the big networks and now, by experimenting with a triweekly talk show, it’s using the big network strategy for its own gain. Netflix created an army of binge-watching addicts and it seems Chelsea will be a sort of streaming nicotine patch — we can’t watch it all at once, but there will still be three episodes a week, which will just have to do.
