First, the good news: NBC has given the green light to Chelsea Handler‘s comedy pilot, Are You There Vodka, It’s Me, Chelsea. The host of E!’s Chelsea Lately and author of three hilarious books of personal essays was destined for her own scripted comedy show since she appeared on Girls Behaving Badly, so it’s about time.
But, the bad news: Handler will not actually star in the show. Instead, she’ll work behind the scenes as executive producer. The series will apparently lift stories from her books (the show’s namesake, My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands and Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang.)
Obviously, there will be some heavy editing to make it boring suitable for prime time.
According to EW.com, the show will instead star a “20-something woman who will closely resemble Handler herself.” In a statement to EW, Handler said:
The show will be mined from my books and allow me the creative control to put a younger actress in the situations I found myself in at 26, while I sit back, laugh, and not get arrested.
Great. So we’ll have to watch some impostor try to pull of Handler’s notorious deadpan and sarcasm. We can at least hope she includes a storyline involving her lesbian roommates she’s known to talk about. Or maybe she’ll save that for her other new project, After Lately, which will be based on her job as an E! host.
Who do you think would make a convincing mid-20s Chelsea? It’d have to be someone who could make us believe they love vodka just as much. Lindsay Lohan, perhaps? The actress has long been a topic of discussion (i.e. ridicule) on Chelsea Lately and the two pulled off a pretty amusing skit at this years’ MTV Video Music Awards in which LiLo turns the tables and confronts Handler about her drinking.
Also, Handler has two lesbian roommates (one is her stylist) that she talks about frequently, and she doesn’t shy away from writing about them in her books. An excerpt from My Horizontal Life:
Plus she likes to talk about lesbians in general. So you should probably get a sense of humor before you watch her NBC show — or just don’t watch it at all!
