Chelsea Handler clarifies her relationship status after seemingly debuting new boyfriend

Chelsea Handler has set the record straight after fans were convinced she debuted her new boyfriend on social media.

On 27 September, the 48-year-old comedian appeared to debut a new romance on her Instagram Story. In the snap, Handler was seen kissing a man on the cheek as he wrapped his arms around her.

"This is my baby. He is full of love and positivity and his body is my wonderland,” she captioned the post, referencing John Mayer’s hit 2001 song, “Your Body Is a Wonderland”.

“I love my baby and now I go back to work,” Handler continued, before promoting her two shows at the Beacon Theatre in New York City over the weekend.

However, Chandler later took to her Instagram Story once again to clarify her relationship status and reveal the mystery man’s identity. “My vacation is over you guys, and now my publicists are calling me,” she said in a follow-up video. “They just texted me with a Google thing of me saying, ‘Chelsea Handler announces new boyfriend on Instagram.’

“I did not announce new boyfriend on Instagram,” Handler joked. “That man was, is, the bartender right next door to my house in Mallorca, and that’s why he’s my baby.”

She added that she simply called the bartender her “baby” because “he made me so many drinks”.

Handler shared that she’s even received texts from her cousins asking if she indeed does have a new boyfriend. “Baby doesn’t mean boyfriend,” she explained. “I can’t believe I have to clarify things like this.”

The former Chelsea Lately host was previously in a relationship with fellow comedian Jo Koy. In July 2022, the pair announced their breakup in an Instagram video they initially recorded to mark their one-year anniversary. Instead, the former couple “decided together that it is best for us to take a break from our relationship right now”.

“This man blew my heart open with love and because of him, my life experience has changed forever,” Handler wrote in the caption, praising Koy. “To be loved and adored by Jo Koy has been one of the greatest gifts of my life. He renewed my faith in men, in love, in being 100 per cent who I am, and I’ve never been more optimistic for the future.”

Five months later, Handler opened up about how “difficult” her breakup was with the actor, describing it as one of her “seminal” or “now what” moments in life. “I really believed that this was my guy,” she told actor Brooke Shields on the Now What? podcast in December. “I thought: ‘Oh my god, I won.’ Like I got everything. I have my career, I have respect, I have my family, I have so many friends, I have all of these things. And then I thought this was gonna be the person I spend my life with.”

Handler explained that, towards the end of the relationship, it soon became clear that Koy “was not my person”.

“I am not going to change the way that I behave in order to make you feel more comfortable. I’m not doing that, and I had to walk away from something that I really believed was gonna be a forever relationship,” she maintained. “So that was difficult.”

However, the comedian remains hopeful for the future, she said on the We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle podcast, despite the “emotional rollercoaster” of her breakup with Koy. “As painful as the ending of something like that is, I’m so well-versed in therapy and understanding that every door shutting is a new beginning and I do believe it,” she said.