Fancast: dish 'n dat

Chelsea Handler’s hilariously cheeky show, Chelsea Lately on E!, has just been picked up for 150 more episodes. She has a new book out in April and has already kicked off her stand-up tour, which will take her to Reno, Nevada to perform at the Grand Sierra Resort this Saturday the 15th. Fancast caught up with the very funny lady on the taping of the 100th episode of her show.

Watch Chelsea Lately clips at Fancast.

On the highlights of taping the show:
The good part has been our crew, our friends. Everyone on the show’s pretty stupid, so we have a lot of physical fights, running up and down the hallways like 8 year olds, that’s pretty much the best part of my day. And then, the show’s quick and fast so that’s a lot of fun to do.

What her typical day is like:
Get here at 9:30, I stop at Starshmucks (Starbucks) to get my Cappuccino, because I figure the day I stop doing that is the day things get a little bit out of hand. So I want to make sure I get my coffee every morning. Then I come to work and then I look at all the stories, we figure out who we wanna make fun of that day, try and pick the best stories that are happening, any new gossip; obviously the Eliot Spitzer thing is a huge story right now so we had to talk about that. And then we kind of go our separate ways and do all the different segments of the show, they get everything together on blue cards for me, we practice a cold open, I get my hair and makeup done, just a bunch of different, you know, administrative stuff.

Ricki Lake has been busy showing off her newly svelte bod lately and has also been super busy with her upcoming projects. Her documentary, The Business of Being Born, about her experience with home birthing, has been garnering amazing interest. The film, coming out on DVD on May 6 through Warner Brothers, is such a hit that she's writing a book to follow it up, due out in early 2009. She very quickly talked to us about what she's watching on TV, before she hurried off to finish off winning some dough for charity at the Celebrity World Poker Tournament.

Favorites of all time:
1. The Ricki Lake Show because it made me rich!
2. The Brady Bunch and
3. Little House on the Prairie, while I was growing up.
4. American Idol-- God, we love American Idol at my house.
5. Nip/Tuck

Best show I've never seen:
I have not gotten into Lost I’m embarrassed to say…because I missed the first season. I’m usually a season behind…like The Sopranos I caught up second season. So that’s what usually happens to me. So I have not gotten into Lost—I want to. I hear House is like unbelievable, and I haven’t seen that.

Best TV show ever:
[She couldn't answer because they were calling out her name through the loudspeaker!]

In a move sure to shock his fans--heck, sure to shock everyone--Ryan Seacrest is gracing the cover of Details magazine, next to the words "Ryan Seacrest Knows What You Think of Him". Courageous!

One day, when your 5-year-old comes marching into the kitchen, the sleeves of one of your French-cuff shirts dangling past his wrists, and says, “Daddy, when I grow up, I want to be a content provider,” you’ll have Ryan Seacrest to blame. Or to thank, depending on how much financial support you’re hoping to get from your offspring in your dotage.

The last episode of My Fair Brady recently aired, leaving many viewers hungry for all that is Adrianne and Christopher. Adrianne Curry has kept herself super busy after the end of the show with pitching new shows, getting a clothing line off the ground and updating her much talked-about MySpace blog, which has been drawing tremendous traffic from her devoted fans (and is regularly mentioned on media blogs). The response grew nearly exponentially after an episode aired where Adrianne and her best friend Andrea have a candid conversation about an emotional event from their past dealing with rape. We caught up with Adrianne a few days before the season finale and talked about this response from her fans, dealing with crazed Brady Bunch femme-fans, not allowing her kids to become child actors and of course her Knight in shining armor, husband Christopher.

On her typical day
Typical day. Well, lately it hasn’t been very typical. But, typical would be I wake up, I go to the gym, work out…normally shower there. Come home, work online, work out emails, do interviews, sometimes go to work. That’s about it…

On the reaction she received from fans after opening up on the show about a past rape
Oh my god, I turned onto Myspace one day and I had like three and a half thousand friend requests. What the f****? I thought someone spammed the s*** out of me or did something. Opened them up and started looking at them. And you know how you can send the whole comments with your friend requests. And I had a ca-jillion little comments all basically saying the same thing…it was all rape and molestation survivors. It was just overwhelming…just how many people there were and how amazing it felt. I don’t know it’s a lonely thing to suffer, and when you realize it’s not. And, you start to talk about it…that there’s so many people that suffered the same thing…I just found it absolutely beautiful. So many women were able to reach out and so many women were crediting me for being able to start dealing with it. Like I’d never told anyone until today because I saw your show…and it’s like oh god…it’s a blessing and a burden at the same time. Because I realized that I really have got to change myself…but I’ve been going through a self-discovery phase. If I want to be a role model to women then I’ve got to knock off all behaviors that I know are directly from it…running around naked and being overtly sexual…I know it all stems from my trauma in my past. I always wonder if that s*** didn’t happen to me…what kind of person would I be? Would I be who I am today…probably not.

Gordon Ramsay's fantastic but hellishly scary temper will be on display tomorrow night on the season premiere of Hell's Kitchen. Fancast got a chance to chat with the vociferous chef, where we got to see a gentler, softer side of Mr. Ramsay; a side he says does not like to curse, feels funny about Buckingham Palace appetizers, and that gets annoyed with celebrity-obsessed and stupid chefs.

Gordon on the new season:
I’m very excited about season four, more so than any other year before. When you look at the setup in terms of the level of professionalism, this year we’ve raised the bar. Looking for a chef personally is something I’ve stood by, got very nervous about and more importantly, I’d like to think that we have the most amazing—I hate that word “cast”— I call them chefs. FOX wanted to run a show and I run the restaurant, so it’s a great team of chefs, more so than any other year, and an amazing, talented female following this year, which I’ve never seen before anything quite like it. It’s quite refreshing, really on the back of a male dominant, chauvinistic stance that kitchens have today, so I was really pleased.

Tina Fey doesn't miss the news humor business, saw the strike like a second maternity leave, and wants Oprah to play her best friend. She talked to Fancast about this and more, a few days before the season premiere of 30 Rock.

Any truth to the rumor that Tracy, the show's host, will be endorsing one of the Presidential candidates?
No, because we don’t have anything - actually, we do have a storyline now that you mention that. We do have a storyline coming up where Jack tries to enlist Tracy to be the new black face of the Republican party. So actually, we do have a story about that kind of.

Do you bring your daughter onto the set?
I do try to bring her sometimes and she likes to come. She likes to hang out in the makeup room. But at the same time, it is a busy workplace and I always feel mindful that not everyone gets to bring their kids. We - actually at 30 Rock, we also try to do special days where we have parties where everyone can bring their kids. We had a really fun Halloween party for the kids and then we’re trying to have sort of a spring/Easter party this week.

Do you pine about getting critically acclaimed show or getting the ratings?
No. I mean, I think for us it’s - we sort of have a feeling of like we’re going to keep making these until they don’t let us make them anymore. But I think TV is changing and people are aware of that. And I think the way ratings are measured is going to continue to change over the next couple years in terms of measuring DVR sampling and Internet sampling. I think the traditional Nielsen thing might not quite reflect everyone that’s watching our show.