Familiar face for ‘ Fashion Police’
After a year of turmoil, E! is hoping Melissa Rivers can bail out “Fashion Police.”
The cable network announced last week that Rivers, an executive producer of the series, will join Giuliana Rancic and Brad Goreski as one of the program’s co- hosts. The show will return on Aug. 31.
“Fashion Police,” which skewers celebrity fashion, has struggled to regain its footing since main host Joan Rivers died last August. The program took a four- month hiatus before returning in time for the Golden Globes last January with Kathy Griffin in the elder Rivers’ position.
But then everything went haywire. In February, Rancic joked that she thought the singer Zendaya’s dreadlocks must smell like “patchouli oil” and “weed.” Then co- host Kelly Osbourne publicly voiced her disappointment with Rancic and quit the show that month. In March, Griffin was a goner, telling her fans she didn’t want her “comedy to contribute to a culture of unattainable perfectionism.”
Melissa Rivers, who oversaw all that controversy, admitted to The Times in April that the show had rushed back into production.
“But it was awards season. It made such logical sense,” she said. “But it was this weird validation that we really were a family. The matriarch died. And what happens when the head of a family dies? The sisters fight, and someone tries to marry in — and that went really well.”
Rivers said she was hopeful the show would “find itself,” noting this spring that she constantly sends text messages to Rancic and thinks Goreski is “one of the easiest people” she’s ever worked with.
In a statement, E’s Executive Vice President of programming and development Jeff Olde said Rivers had “helped shape ‘ Fashion Police’ into an iconic TV series. ... We are pleased to now also feature Melissa in front of the ‘ Fashion Police’ cameras.”
Rivers sat in on the “Fashion Police” panel occasionally when her mother was alive and also did plenty of on- camera work with her mom on the red carpet. She and her two co- hosts will be joined by a couple of “rotating celebrity guests,” E! said. The revamped series will air for six episodes starting in August, including coverage of MTV’s Video Music Awards.