San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Kathy Griffin holds her head high
Kathy Griffin is running late. Really late.
Calling from a tour stop in Canada a full day after our scheduled interview time — and the first anniversary of the day that famous photograph depicting her holding a mask made to look like the bloodied, decapitated head of Donald Trump appeared — the comedian and actress once again finds herself at the center of a media storm.
This time, it’s for an epic thread she dropped on Twitter in defense of late-night talk show host and satirist Samantha Bee, who drew her own whirlwind of outrage from the president and his supporters for referring to Ivanka Trump as a “feckless c—” on her TBS comedy show, “Full Frontal.” “I know what Samantha Bee is going through, and I’m determined to say, ‘Not on my watch,’ ” Griffin said in a long, candid conversation centering on her return to stand-up comedy.
After the photo went viral, the “Suddenly Susan” and “My Life on the D-List” star said she lost income, received death threats and was placed under investigation by the Department of Justice. She kept out of the public eye for nearly a year, during which she shaved her head in solidarity with her older sister Joyce, who was undergoing chemotherapy (she died in September).
Now she’s back and bolder than ever.
Griffin, 57, is on tour
throughout North America, with dates at Radio City Music Hall and Carnegie Hall in New York City. On Thursday and Friday, June 14 and 15, she performs at the Masonic in San Francisco — and she promises not to hold back, as reflected in the name of the “Laugh Your Head Off World Tour.”
Q: That was a pretty epic tweet storm you delivered. What compelled you to jump back into the fray? A: Obviously, it’s something that’s taken me a year to process. Leave it to me to try to get it across in a Twitter Moments. I don’t want to say I’m on a campaign, but I’m encouraging people to reach out to TBS and stand by Samantha Bee.
I’m in Canada, which is great. It’s always fun to do standup in different countries to get some perspective. I was making fun of them because their biggest problem with Justin Trudeau is he wore Indian garb — supposedly inappropriate outfit — for one outing. I’m like, “Oh, please. Calm down. We have a Nazi sympathizer in the White House.”
Q: When did you realize you no longer had to hold back and you could be yourself again? A: It’s definitely taken a whole year. The whole thing has been a process. I’ll probably have a very different rearview mirror approach to how I talk about this even a year from now. I understand that I’m going to be tied to that photo, for better or worse, for the rest of my career. So I’ve decided it’s important to lean into it.
I spent some time dealing with the photo, some time running from it. Now it’s a full embrace.
I’m a 57-year-old standup comic that’s done 23 standup comedy specials and all this stuff. But I certainly never saw this one coming. In my case, Don Jr. — or Eddie Munster, as I call him — started demanding
the firing of Kathy Griffin at CNN, which is sort of funny in itself because I was working there one night a year.
I was bitching about how I felt like I was being blacklisted by television, an industry I participated in for years and that I love doing. As I saw what happened to me they’re actively trying to do to Samantha Bee, I thought, “Well, let me step in. I think I have a better perspective than I had a year ago.”
It was Don Jr. who kept throwing gasoline on the fire. (President) Trump, while he tweeted about me, never personally said, “She should be fired.” When he personally called today for Samantha’s Bee firing, I thought, “You think you got away with it with me.” He used me for practice with the f—ing Eddie Munster and his brother, the other idiot. Now you guys are so bold that the president himself is calling for Samantha Bee’s firing. It’s really insane.
Q: And it wasn’t the first time this has happened to you. I remember when you got fired from E in 2005 for joking that Dakota Fanning went into rehab. How was this different?
A: It’s historic. My situation is unprecedented because never in the history of the United States has a sitting president used the Oval Office for something like this.
Honestly, I’m thrilled to be able to do shows again. One of the benefits is I can do what I want at the moment. I actually have more freedom at the moment. I’m not beholden to any studio or network. So I can very boldly stand up for Michelle Wolf and Samantha Bee. Very boldly because I no longer have a network or agent. I don’t have a William Morris telling me to “Be quiet, don’t say this.” I’ve already been fired.
Q: When the photo leaked, did you have close friends turn away from you? A: Yeah, and I talk about that in the show. My joke is like when people were going, “Oh, Kathy Griffin got Dixie Chick’d.” I was like, no, “I got Dixie Dick’d!” May I remind you, the Dixie Chicks got a huge arm of support around them from the artistic community. They were on the cover of Entertainment Weekly and Time magazine. That was not my story.
I had everyone turn on me, from Anderson Cooper and people like Don Cheadle, who I know, feeling the need to take to Twitter to condemn me. I was the first celebrity to be put through the Trump woodchopper.
My photo was pre-Weinstein, pre-#MeToo, pre-now. I had people saying, “I support you, but please don’t tell anyone I called you.” It was so toxic. It was so escalated. It was such a genuine security issue that there were some friends I didn’t want to pull into the mix.
I’ll give you a scoop: I got the funniest, cutest video the night the photo was posted from Amy Schumer. She was in a car with Nikki Glaser and some other comedians. It was so touching. She was like, “Kath, it’s Amy with some of New York’s finest lady comedians. Girl, you look great in that picture. Your hair looks so great.”
I just knew I didn’t want to post it because I knew her timeline would be flooded with threats and the bots and stuff. You’re the first person I’m telling after a year.
I know if I ever release that video — it could be today or six months from now — then Amy and Nikki Glaser and the other ladies will be attacked by the Trumpees. It’s a lot to take when you don’t have experience looking at a timeline that’s insane with a lot of death threats in broken English.
Q: Are you covering all this in your show?
A: Last night, I did over three hours onstage. I tell people they can take bathroom breaks whenever they want or bring colostomy bags. I have so much material, and it keeps growing and growing. Now I have some perspective, so when Sarah Huckabee Sanders called my name out it was the first time in a year I thought, “Oh, this is actually great for me. This is hilarious!” She said the thing that people can laugh at now.
At the time, it was reported that I was holding Donald Trump’s severed head. That’s one of my favorite parts of the show — explaining to audiences that it would be difficult to procure a head for any purpose. Now there are fewer people who think I’m in ISIS. I wake up and go, “Ah, today is a good day because there are quite a few people who realize that was harmless, and I’m not an appropriate choice for ISIS. I don’t think I would even make their squad.”
That would have been something I would not have been able to say to you a year ago.
Q: I want to hear more about the night you hung out with Stevie Nicks and Chrissie Hynde and they were trying to offer you advice.
A: That’s one of the stories I love telling in this show. I always thought it was important to take about 10 minutes out of the show to walk people through my interrogation. I started doing it overseas, and you could hear a pin drop. So there’s this 10-minute chunk of show that’s really heavy. But I think it’s essential to talk about it, and it’s essential for me to pepper that part of the story with funny anecdotes.
I had never met Chrissie Hynde. She didn’t know who I was, so Stevie was sort of trying to explain the photo, and that was funny in itself.
It’s right in my lane. It’s got the celebrity element. It’s got an unexpected element. All that stuff is ripe for my act.
Q: How was the White House Correspondents’ Dinner?
A: I could tape a special tomorrow about all the trouble I got at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. I have to say, my career has so many “Forrest Gump” moments. For me to be trying to clean up my Trump scandal and to be in that room that night and of all the people I was in the room watching Sarah Huckabee Sanders not be able to take any joke. I had so much fun. God, I was getting in fights with anybody and everybody.
I have been shunned, but I have the freedom to not give a f—. I’m loving being the mayor of Zero-f—sville.
Q: There’s a whole mob mentality around outrage at the moment. When did people become so sensitive? A: Part of my job is talking my audience through delineating a joke. The reason the Trumps got so offended by that “feckless c—” joke is because it’s true. When you see the context of the joke, which is Samantha Bee very clearly laying out the immigration situation with them literally ripping children out of mothers’ arms, in context it really is what we’re all thinking. As a woman, I thought, “Bitch, you did not post that picture of you holding up your Aryan baby on the same day that kids are being ripped from their parents at the border.”
Yeah, it absolutely is a time we see where we delineate now. Let us do that. That will be our job. I’m going to scream “feckless c—” from the rooftops as much as I can. No. 1, that was f—ing funny. No. 2, I would be way more offended if someone called me “feckless” than “c—.” But you’re right. We’re way too sensitive. But we’re also in a place where Sally Field, the Flying Nun, is not afraid to defend you.
Q: I know you shaved your head in support of your sister, who was going through chemo, but was it partially a way of shedding your old skin?
A: That’s a great question. I didn’t think twice about shaving my head since my sister’s illness was fairly rapid. I really did do it a little bit impulsively, mostly just to get her to laugh, but also to show my love and solidarity. I actually kept shaving it because I love it and I love the convenience of it. Not going to start lighting the scented candles yet, but there was a point where I thought, “Do I want to grow my hair back?”
The symbolism was, “What else am I walking back into?” My hair right now is at that uncomfortable middle stage. It’s like, “Am I ready to grow it back?” Because it also means I’m going to start looking like the girl from the picture again. And what does that really mean?
I’ve been through such an odd experience. So that was more of the decision. Not, should I shave my head, but when should I grow it back? To me, that meant I’m going to re-enter something. I don’t know what it is: a lion’s den or arms of love and support. I’m finding it’s more arms of love.