After hosting “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” this week while the resident host was on vacation, Handler, 47, told Variety that she’s interested in her own show.
“I have, obviously, very strong and loud opinions and I like to share them,” she admitted. “Especially during a time like this, it’s nice for a lot of people to have a female voice out there.”
She used her “Kimmel” monologues to both poke fun and make statements on topics like the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, the sentencing of Ghislaine Maxwell and R. Kelly, and the Jan. 6 hearings on the 2021 insurrection.
“And it’s really got me thinking. These conversations happen every couple of years about whether or not I want to return to late-night or I want to return to a talk show, and I just always think of some reason why I don’t want to do it,” she said in the interview.
“I feel like this is a time,” Handler continued, “Where it’s so important to be represented and to be representing women and to remind people why it’s so important to be loud and to be strong and to be indefatigable about it and to get up and say something. It gives a lot of people comfort when they have somebody speaking for them — you know, not just a white guy, who I’m sure is on our side, but it’s just different.
“There’s really nobody that can experience what it’s like to be a woman other than one of us. So having anybody else comment on that, white men’s opinions are pretty irrelevant.”
The current late-night lineup is all men across the major networks. Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and Trevor Noah aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, but there is expected to be a slot open once James Corden leaves the “Late Late Show” on CBS next summer.
Handler, however, claimed she hasn’t had any chats with CBS bigwigs.
“I personally have not had any conversations with anyone other than my agents, and they were just testing the waters to see how interested I was, so I haven’t talked to anyone directly about a specific slot,” she said. “But yes, I am interested in getting back out there. So, I will be talking to all these people about what those opportunities look like and if that is the right spot for me. I will consider it when the conversation matches my interest level.”
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