Chelsea Handler ready for break after latest tour

Chelsea lately overexposed?

Those who beg to differ won't be in the vodka line Saturday at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace. But Chelsea Handler is surprisingly on the side of the skeptics.

"I've done about a hundred shows in the last year. You don't want to overdo it," the hardest-working party gal in show business says of a plan to give stand-up a rest after this tour.

"I have a lot of other stuff going on now, so it's really hard for me to be flying out and be working seven days a week, essentially.

"I've been doing it for a while, and you want to do it for the fans, and just kind of show up and be there, and you want to sign the books and do all those things.

"But at a certain point, it's kind of just saturating the market. You want there to be an appetite. So I think after this round, I'll definitely be taking a break."

Those live dates all came on top of her E! talk hit "Chelsea Lately," and, for a time, the spoof of backstage exposes, "After Lately."

Then there are the four books, the latest of which is written not by the comedian, but by friends and family: "Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me." Three of the contributors -- Heather McDonald, Brad Wollack and Josh Wolf -- are Saturday's opening acts.

And a sitcom based on an earlier book, "Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea," has been picked up by NBC for next year. Handler's alter-ego will be played by Laura Prepon of "That '70s Show," but Handler will turn up in a recurring role as her own born-again sister.

"She's salty, she's sexy, she's kind of got that street attitude so she kind of fit the bill perfectly," Handler says of Prepon's take on her pre-fame life as a freewheeling waitress.

So, yes, distinct possibility of overexposure.

"I'm trying to make it slow down. It's just hard to do that, you know?" she says in a phone call of mostly succinct, nonchatty answers that suggest a saturation point with interviews as well.

"It kind of all just comes together. More work (leads to) more work and all of a sudden you're like, 'Wait. Why am I working all the time?' "

Handler never worked in Las Vegas as an unknown. E! already had aired her first series, the sketch-driven "The Chelsea Handler Show," when she split a bill at The Comedy Festival with Jim Breuer in 2007.

Going on to big-league dates at the Colosseum gave her a chance to meet Bette Midler and Cher. Otherwise, she says, "Vegas I try to get in and out of as quickly as possible. So it's only one night for me. Because otherwise, bad things can happen."

She's asked if she wished she had been famous in the era before phone cameras, when celebrities could cut loose without ending up on YouTube.

"You definitely have to be more discreet, but I don't spend a lot of time out in public unless I'm performing or working. Usually if I'm with my friends, I do it in private," she says.

"You can go out, you just have to keep it together. If you're a disaster, you need to go indoors."

There has been Internet backlash about Handler's stand-up act, in which she admits, "I work out my new stuff onstage," and online speculation about public intoxication.

"Sometimes I drink, sometimes I don't. It just depends," she says. "It depends on how many shows I have that night, (or) if I go to dinner beforehand. Sometimes I drink when I get to the show. Sometimes I drink onstage when I'm there. Sometimes I don't drink at all."

For her girls'-night-out fans, it matters not. They drink for her. Unless the bar runs out of vodka, which led to some grumbling in the lobby at one of her Colosseum dates last year.

"I've heard that a lot, (that) they don't have a lot of vodka where I'm performing. I don't understand how that happens. I can't really organize that aspect of it, so I try to stay out."

She has enough to do already.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.