Marvel TV’s Chelsea Handler: “I Had a Midlife Identity Crisis Once Trump Won”
Marvel TV’s Chelsea Handler, who will be writing and Executive Producing an upcoming animated show Marvel’s Tigra & Dazzler Show, appeared on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, where she admitted she had a “midlife identity crisis” after Donald Trump won the 2016 election.
Handler admitted to having the midlife identity crisis after Maher opened the segment saying, “You know I’m reading your new book and I’m feeling like a bad friend, because I didn’t realize you were suffering so much.” Maher continued, “Everyone took the 2016 election hard, but I didn’t know it really knocked you down like that. And you came back stronger, that’s what the book is about.”
Handler responded, “Yeah I had a midlife identity crisis once Trump won the election, because I had never had my world feel so unhinged I think.” Handler then goes into how she paid a psychiatrist following the election, “And I had to pay a psychiatrist to listen to me b**** about Donald Trump for about the first three weeks.”
Handler then notes that the election of Donald Trump was related to her childhood.
“Once we got past that, and we got to the real stuff, I realized the parallel there was my world becoming unhinged when I was a little girl. My brother died when I was 9-years-old. I had never related the two. But for me, as I can imagine it must have been for so many people it was a huge emotional trigger of everything being destabilized. I realized just how spoiled and privileged I’d been all my life to be this upset every day on a 10 every day. The outrage and the anger, I just wanted to f****** fight people. I was like I was gotta go see a psychiatrist.”
Maher would then comment on what he saw as Handler’s white guilt. He would add that white people hating on themselves doesn’t help minorities. He would note, “We’re kind of self-flagellating ourselves, and it’s not helping.”
Handler would disagree stating:
“I disagree. I think self-flagellation is good with regard to this. I think we’ve misbehaved for so long, that we need to get our s*** together. I really am trying very hard to not think about my own experience, and to think about other people’s experiences. In that vein, I think it’s important to reach out and go ‘what was your story like, what was your life like.’ It’s not like mine. I didn’t have that many struggles. I’ve never been hungry. I’ve never been assaulted. And I think that something you learn through therapy which is so valid for me is I didn’t think I had a right to be in pain because I wasn’t raped, I wasn’t molested, I did have anything that I deemed as worthy of being damaged. I had a brother who died and I thought don’t get to be in pain. I have this great life. I have a big careerd. I do whatever what I want.”
Later on in the interview, Maher discusses how Trump’s election led Handler to embrace weed. Handler addressed it saying, “What I discovered was alcohol and outrage are not a good mix. It’s like a hat on a hat. So, I pivoted to towards weed and cannabis, and for me, who is a very active, high strung person, the cannabis was a gateway drug to meditation.” She added, “And then, I had my awakening, and I was like, hey, f*** Trump, we’ve got so many other beautiful things going on.”
Handler would also comment on Joe Biden, “I think Joe Biden is just a grandfather. He’s old. I don’t like these stories of these women coming out talking about a man smelling their hair or kissing the back of their head. I feel like it diminishes people who have actually experienced [inaudible].”
Handler’s Marvel TV show will be joined by three other adult animated shows. Handler’s show is being described as “politically progressive.” It will see Tigra and Dazzler “try to get their superpowered heads, hands and hearts around life in the City of Angels.” All four of the shows will crossover in The Offenders special.
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