Lisa Lampanelli, at the Palms, ready to show there’s more to her than dirty words

Is comedy's "Queen of Mean" going soft on us? Not until next month.

Lisa Lampanelli will be in full bore Saturday at the Palms, slinging her signature insults because "I just can't stop. It's like I gotta take chances every time I do this damn show. It's so much fun to, you know, say words nobody's supposed to say."

Ah, but on Feb. 12? That's when we start seeing the comedian on the new round of NBC's "Celebrity Apprentice." She says the Donald Trump competition is a calculated move in a new direction, to let fans see more of the real person behind the one-dimensional act.

"It's like, wow, I'm being who I am at home," the 50-year-old comedian says. "I wanted people to know there's more to me, so this is like a good transition" to a Broadway show in the works for next fall.

Lampanelli can't dispute she is this generation's Don Rickles. She leaves no ethnic stereotype behind in the 1960s, and it was a series of roasts -- a creaky, Dean Martin-era format resurrected by Comedy Central -- that put her over the top in 2005, when she ran away with the incineration of Pamela Anderson.

But Rickles never did reality TV. Only late in life did he and Joan Rivers become the focus of documentaries revealing their off-stage personas. "They maybe would have wanted that opportunity to say, 'This is real, this is who I am,' " Lampanelli muses.

So she agreed to "Celebrity Apprentice" for two reasons. "First of all, I wanted to show people that I'm really smart and I work really hard. ... Anybody who's talked to me knows that's how I am anyway," she says.

"I wanted to show that comics are really bright, that we've run our own businesses for years and we could do it by ourselves if we have to, which most of us have to until we get a little bit of notoriety."

Beyond that, "I also wanted to show that I have a lot of feelings people might not imagine I would have," including some competition drama that "hurt my feelings and stuff."

Lampanelli competes with a comedian-heavy roster that includes Adam Carolla and Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller. "When I went downstairs into that lobby and saw Adam and Penn, I'm not lying to you, I almost started crying because I was so happy. They didn't tell us who was going to be there, and I was really nervous: 'Is it going to be all these reality people who are mean?' " she recalls. (Thereby answering the question, who does the "Queen of Mean" really fear?)

Mix in naughty pop tart Aubrey O'Day (briefly the star of "Peepshow") and Clay Aiken would seem to be a lamb among wolves. "I think maybe people may underestimate him, and he may be very good. This guy can hold his own," she hints.

Even though TV competitions are "cooked" in the editing room, "I stand behind every single thing I said and did," she says. "They can't edit me to make me look bad because I already made myself look really real. If people respond to the real me, that's great. And if they don't, that wasn't a true fan anyway."

The sex and food dependencies that fueled Lampanelli's memoir "Chocolate, Please" also will add gravity to the Broadway project overseen by Alan Zweibel, who helped Billy Crystal craft his Tony-winning "700 Sundays."

"It's going to be autobiographical and yet, we're comics right? We have to be funny. Even stories that have a little sentimental part and a little tear in the eye, 10 seconds later you're laughing your ass off," she promises.

"Now that I'm working on the Broadway show, it seems like comedy is more fun than it used to be, because I was getting bored of it," she adds.

It's not that her overblown comic persona held her tongue. Lampanelli has cultivated such a loyal fan base, "I can say whatever I want. They just get it. But I felt boxed in from the emotional point of view, like I can never be myself 100 percent.

"Now I can. It feels really cool."

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