Chelsea Handler is openly acknowledging that the woman she has become today is thanks to this Hollywood star.
In a Feb. 27 interview on “The Drew Barrymore Show,” Handler discussed the impact of therapy and how actor Jane Fonda played a pivotal role in shaping her current mindset. Barrymore reminisced about a time when Handler invited her to attend one of Fonda’s famous dance parties — an experience that, rather than being the raucous good time it was intended to be, turned into something quite different.
Barrymore said Fonda later told her about seeing Handler at her event.
“She was in a grumpy mood that night,” Barrymore shared, quoting Fonda speaking about Handler.
The host admitted she wasn’t surprised by Handler’s mood, chalking it up to Handler’s usual “salty dog” demeanor. But in a twist, Barrymore learned that Fonda had taken it upon herself to reach out to Handler, intent on addressing her behavior.
“She confronted me and said I was badly behaved, and that I offended a bunch of people,” Chandler confessed, recalling the conversation as nothing short of mortifying.
Thanks to her own journey with therapy, the comedian knew not to defend, but instead “accepted the truth of the information.”
“The more meaningful part of it was that she was being a sister to me by even taking the time to tell me this,” Handler said. “She could’ve blown me off and never spoken to me again. She didn’t do that. She asked me to come to her house because she cared about me and said, ‘You can do much better than this. This isn’t who you are.’”
At that moment, Handler admitted Fonda’s words modeled “the kind of woman” she aspired to be and vowed to be “the type of woman that tells women the truth.”
Handler’s therapy journey provided her with the tools to process the moment with clarity, and those tools have, in turn, helped shape her into the woman she is today.
“The idea is that if you are defensive, you’re usually wrong, because if you’re right you don’t have to defend yourself,” Handler remarked. “It only matters if it’s true. And Jane Fonda, I knew she wasn’t making this up, and when someone’s giving you something that is hard to hear you should be in gratitude for the honesty of that.”
The author concluded that “since that conversation,” she has become “a better person” and imparts this same wisdom to the women she interacts with.
“We need each other more than we ever have,” Handler said.