Chelsea Handler is heading back to Netflix this spring. The comedian’s upcoming standup special, “Chelsea Handler: The Feeling,” will premiere on the streamer on March 25. And this time around, she’s rallying against pickleball.
“I blame COVID for pickleball,” Handler says in the first clip for the upcoming special. “When people bang on and on about pickleball, that is not real exercise, OK? So shut the f–k up about it. You would burn more calories shoving an actual pickle up your asshole on a pickleball court then playing a game of pickleball.”
Throughout the special, Handler also jokes about her own birth, her business ventures as a teenager and what a press release describes as “a frenzy of ill-timed events all motivated by ‘the feeling.’” The special was written and performed by Handler with Shannon Hartman, who previously executive produced Handler’s “Revolution” special and worked on “Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj,” directing. Handler and Hartman executive produce the special alongside Michelle Caputo. “The Feeling” comes from Arts & Industry as well as Chelsea Handler Production.
“The Feeling” continues Handler’s long relationship with Netflix. The comedian has produced two standup specials for the streamer before this one, 2014’s “Uganda Be Kidding Me” and 2022’s “Revolution.” But her most interesting collaborations with Netflix were the ones that didn’t happen with a microphone in hand.
In 2016, Handler debuted her docuseries “Chelsea Does,” a four-episode series that followed Handler exploring complicated topics like marriage and drugs alongside experts and her comedian friends. That was followed by Netflix’s first-ever talk show, “Chelsea.” That series only lasted for two seasons, but it paved the way for Netflix’s experiments in the space, which included “Patriot Act,” “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman,” “Norm Macdonald Has a Show” and John Mulaney’s upcoming “Everybody’s Here.”
Handler also released a documentary in 2019, titled “Hello, Privilege. It’s Me, Chelsea.” Similar to the curiosity of “Chelsea Does,” that film followed Handler as she deconstructed her own white privilege with help from famous faces like Kevin Hart, Tiffany Haddish and W. Kamau Bell.
