Chelsea Handler covers the new issue of something called “Marie Claire @ Work”. I guess the magazine is trying to differentiate between the “normal” celebrity profile and the profile of a working woman, with a focus on her business stuff. I guess Chelsea is a good enough choice for that kind of profile – she’s developed a lucrative brand for herself, and she has a devoted fanbase of women who seem to enjoy her. But… you know how I feel about her. I think she’s awful. So I found this whole Marie Claire piece to be too cute by half, especially when they approach her by saying that Chelsea attracts, “smart, young, ambitious women hungry for a witty straight shooter who tells it like it is–minus Leno’s yuk-yuks, Letterman’s smugness, and Jon Stewart’s smarty-pants editorializing. Handler has made a lucrative career as the best friend you’re desperate to have- gorgeous but not intimidating, always game for a night out, and loyal to the death, as evidenced by her numerous on-the-record critiques of Angelina Jolie, bête noire of her good pal Jennifer Aniston.” Gross. False. Upsetting.

Handler likes to drink: “I went out with a guy who once told me I didn’t need to drink to make myself more fun to be around,” she joked. “I told him, ‘I’m drinking so that you’re more fun to be around.'”

On the cancellation of “her ratings-challenged, critically panned NBC sitcom Are You There, Chelsea?”: “Obviously I care about anything I do, but this was more of a pain in the ass after a while. Creatively, it was a really good lesson, and I knew I was due for one… I can’t just throw my name on something and hope everybody gets it. Everything I’ve done has been really fortuitous, but you don’t learn a lot when everything’s easy all the time.”

On boyfriend Andre Balazs: “I’m definitely worried about maintaining my relevance and not wanting to go too far out of bounds to accommodate someone else”

On Joan Rivers saying that Chelsea “made it on her back, f–king” then-head of E! Ted Harbert: “I so didn’t, and I so don’t care about you asking about it…I would come home from work, and Ted would be like, ‘Do you want to watch your show?’ and I’d be like, ‘No, I just came from my show. That’s the last thing I’d want to do.’ That was the reason it didn’t work out, ultimately. I think.”

Her career: “I don’t like to be that aggressive or ambitious,” she says. “I know it doesn’t seem like that, but I don’t feel like, ‘Oh God, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do that.’ I have severe ADD, and I’m constantly looking to amuse myself.”

Cheslea “is careful about alienating fans with gratuitous licensing deals”: No fragrances, she insists, and on the heels of This Means War, in which she costarred with buddy Reese Witherspoon, no more supporting roles.

She wants to tackle more serious topics on Chelsea Lately: “There was a period of time when I started getting antsy and was like, ‘Ugh, I can’t sit here and gossip anymore,'” she says. “I want to talk more about politics and human-interest stories, like when somebody shoots somebody else at a drive-through over Chicken McNuggets–stupid stuff like that.”

What she’ll do after her contract (which goes to 2014) is up: “I’m not a network kind of girl … There’s no long-term goal. I just know I’m on a contract for two years and in the interim I’m gonna do whatever I can to make that as fruitful as possible, and try and get as much success as I can for the people around me.”

[From Marie Claire]

I found Chelsea’s response to the question about Are You There, Chelsea? cancellation question very interesting. Her first response “Obviously I care about anything I do, but this was more of a pain in the ass after a while” – is fascinating. Is she saying that making her particular brand of humor fit into network television was a “pain in the ass” or that dealing with the mountain of criticism was a pain in the ass? But the second part is better – “Creatively, it was a really good lesson, and I knew I was due for one… I can’t just throw my name on something and hope everybody gets it. Everything I’ve done has been really fortuitous, but you don’t learn a lot when everything’s easy all the time.” Yeah… because nobody “got it” with that show, it was so awful. And I’m really pleased that Chelsea isn’t going to be doing any more movies. YAY!

Photos courtesy of Marie Claire.