In the excerpt that follows (including the audiobook chapter below), Handler explains how Jane Fonda helped her along the way. Read the full story below, but beware: It will give you secondhand embarrassment.
I got an email from Jane Fonda one day that said, “Hi, Chelsea, It’s Jane. I was wondering if you could come over to my house for dinner. I’d like to talk to you about a couple of things.”
“Tonight at seven.”
Jesus, I thought. This sounds like I’m in trouble — and I was exactly right. I was in trouble.
Chelsea Handler's 'I'll Have What She' Having'Random House
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“No,” I replied.
The event she was talking about had been three months prior, and the truth was, I had noticed she was a little icy toward me. But I hadn’t obsessed over it, because at that point, I was bouncing through life with no direction or intention and other people’s feelings were not my problem. If I got a negative vibe from someone, I never overanalyzed it, because I wasn’t grounded, and I didn’t overthink anything. When I am grounded, I am as solid as a tree. When I’m not, I’m more like a leaf. I can say that now, because I know what the difference is.
Wow, I thought. This is a doublef--ksywhoopsiedoodle. Jane Fonda calling me out on my badly behaved self was as serious as it gets.
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I had just started going to therapy, so there was comfort in knowing I could bring this back to my therapist and have him help me digest and correct my behavior. But on a bigger note, Jane’s admonishment made me understand and think about what it is I am trying to put out into this world. Definitely not what I was doing at Jane’s party. The truth of the matter was: Who knows what drugs I was on? It could have been anything. It’s my state of mind that determines my behavior on drugs, and if I’m in a good place in my life, and I’m grounded, drugs are fun, and so am I; if I’m in a bad state of mind or in a bad time of my life, drugs will only make me defensive or angry, and that’s when I bite.
“Good,” she told me. “Go find out what your problem is, because your gifts are plentiful, and sometimes people with the most gifts have the easiest time throwing them in the trash. Don’t be a product of your environment, Chelsea. Make your environment be a product of you.”
From the book I'll Have What She's Having by Chelsea Handler. Copyright © 2025 by Chelsea Handler. Published by The Dial Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC Audio courtesy of Random House Audio, read by the Author. All rights reserved.
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