All signs point to the fact that Chelsea Handler is gearing up to leave E! According to her manager Irving Azoff, the Chelsea Lately host—who has been fairly open about how much she dislikes the network that employees her—is “positioning herself for life after her current contract expires.” Handler specifically hired music manager Azoff to help her plan her post-E! career, and she’s currently taking exploratory meetings with production companies and other cable networks. While Deadline speculates that this could be a negotiation tactic, it does seem as if Handler is really set to leave this time.
If Handler steps down from her show at the end of 2014, she’ll leave behind a complicated legacy. Hers is the only late-night show hosted by a woman and the first late-night talk show to premiere outside of the broadcast networks. Handler is well-known for her brash style, which has led her to both write op-eds about feminism and also tweet some fairly racist things about the Oscars. Chelsea Lately is currently on its eighth season—an impressive run for any talk show—and hopefully Handler enjoyed at least some of her time on the network she recently referred to as a “sad, sad place to live.”