Cutting The Bold & The Beautiful Down
An interview with comedienne Kathy Griffin

story by Julie Weisberg / Metroline January 23, 2006

There is no one quite like Kathy Griffin. Brave, brash, fearless and funny, the talented comedienne cuts the bold and the beautiful down to size with all the prize-fighting wit and zip of a comedic Ali.

Over the years, the native mid-Westerner’s ability to push the outrageous envelope and audiences’ buttons, in conjunction with her kinetic improvisational style, has built Griffin a large and loyal following among GLBT communities everywhere.
Whether co-starring on a successful, long-running network television sitcom, unsettling the famed and fabulous along the red carpet on cable, or having her humor fall on deaf and uninterested ears on stage at a ritzy fundraiser, Kathy Griffin is always unpredictable — and yet always Kathy Griffin.

“And that is the only way I can do it,” Griffin told Metroline during an early January phone interview from her home in California. “I think that (fans) know that if they come to see me, the next time they come to see me, it is going to be different.”

Griffin, who began honing her comedic skills in the mid-1980’s with the Los Angeles-based improvisational comedy group, The Groundlings, often only comes on stage with a loose outline of each night’s stand-up routine. This, she said, keeps her comedy fresh and current – and without a net.

“I have never been good at memorizing 50 minutes of material, and then going and doing that 50 minutes of material for two years and never changing one line – to me, that is just boring,” Griffin said, adding that when she was in the Groundlings, the actors were required to “to be up on the news” and current pop culture for their quick-draw comedy.

“I mean, when you have someone such as Lindsay Lohan admitting to doing coke and being bulimic, the whole audience is looking at you and wondering, ‘When is she going to talk about that?’ Why would you want to do your act with stuff from six months ago when Lindsay Lohan just admitted to being bulimic,” she said. “I got a tell ya, the audiences really respond to that stuff (celebrity stories), and I find that it really strikes a cord in people. I think now, they come to expect it. And there is always some celebrity that is doing some crazy shit every day.”

Griffin’s lack of self-censorship has cost her some jobs. The self-proclaimed “D-List” member recently lost her gig as a red carpet announcer for the E! Channel due to her unabashed celebrity questioning (And, to add injury to insult, after dropping her, the cable network announced that “American Idol” emcee Ryan Seacrest – a frequent topic in Griffin’s act – signed a deal with E! to lead its awards coverage, news anchoring as well as developing new shows.) And many television talk shows shy away from booking the comic for fear of what she might say next.

“Every time I tell myself, ‘Don’t say that tonight. Okay stop here, you are going too far.’ I just can’t stop myself. Because the stuff I talk about, which is primarily celebrity culture, is so ridiculous, that I am like, ‘Who the fuck am I protecting? Star Jones? No,” she explained. “The thing is, yeah, I guess I shouldn’t say that Nicole Ritchie is anorexic, but we are all looking at those pictures and thinking it.”

Griffin added that when she a kid, she had always wanted to be shy, but was frequently unsuccessful.

“I had a big mouth and couldn’t,” she remembered. “And you know, when I go onstage, it is like that again, it is like, ‘Ooohh, I shouldn’t have said that – but, it got a laugh, and it was worth it.’”

Although Griffin’s brash style and celebrity dish may alienate some audiences from her livewire act, it has endeared her to much of America’s queer community.

“I don’t know if it was because I was with the drama click (in high school), but ever since I can remember, I have always hung out with gay people. I was like that girl that went to the prom with the gay guy,” Griffin said.

“I am about as politically liberal as you can get, and I identify with somebody who has to bite and scratch and fight for what you want, and I also very much feel like an outsider looking in pretty much no matter what scenario I am in.”

She added that this is why she coined the phrase “the D-List,” because everyone feels like they don’t belong “in some scenario.”

“You know, the most successful, beautiful, famous person in the world is always going to be in some kind of scenario where they are going to feel like an outsider. And, you know, that is what I see the gay community as, having to fight and fight and fight, and the idea to just have to fight for equal rights, that to me is such a worthy struggle. And, in my opinion, that is why gay audiences are so great, because when you have been through struggle, you have got to laugh,” she explained. “It is like nobody laughs at a cancer joke like a cancer patient. They just need that laugh and they go there with you. And I feel that gay audiences have a very high feeling for outrageousness – which is a dream for a comic, because I hate censorship of any kind in the arts — and I just have plain old common interest with gay people. I’m on the same page.”

Griffin’s boldness led her to take a USO trip to Afghanistan last year, a trip which is documented in a short home movie included in her newest DVD, “Allegedly.” Moved by the experience, the Chicago-area native said she has decided to make a similar trip to Iraq next month, but this time on her own.

“What I am going to do is go over there with a DVD of one of my specials, and show my special – because they can, like, put me up in one of three of Saddam’s palaces where they actually have projection capabilities – show the special, then I will walk out afterwards and do some material, and then do some signings,” she said.

Griffin added that while her appearance on last year’s USO tour was an important moment for her, it was also an “intense” one.

“It really is quite an experience going over there,” she said of Afghanistan.

While she will return to Bravo this June for a second season of her hit cable reality series, “Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List,” Griffin will spend much of the early new year doing stand-up at local theaters around the county. So far, she said, ticket sales have been brisk, a phenomenon she attributes to the first run of “My Life on the D-List” last year.

“I have to say that my tour dates and my ticket sales have really, really been helped by the Bravo show. So when people say, ‘Why would you do a reality show? Why would you let cameras in your house?’ Well, that’s one reason,” she said with a chuckle. “I am able to play much nicer venues, play in lots of nice theaters … it is like a dream to go out and play these types of theaters. I am just so excited.”

Still, even though she is happy for her own recent success, Griffin said she is frustrated by the lack of female-centered sitcoms on network television.

“What I miss is seeing the ladies on network television. There is such a drought, it is shocking. And don’t talk to me about the (Desperate) Housewives. I mean really funny women. I don’t mean hot 40-year-olds running around in miniskirts. I miss Roseanne, I miss Brett Butler, I miss Lucille Ball and Mary Tyler Moore, I miss Phyllis (Diller),” she said.

When asked what has created the lack of female humor on primetime network schedules, Griffin said it all boils down to “good old-fashioned sexism.”

“Television is now owned by corporations, corporations are run by men and the truth of the matter is that women don’t sell as well. If you have a female-driven show it doesn’t make as much money in syndication. But I still think that one of the dirtiest little secrets about sitcoms is that the ‘Golden Girls’ was a big hit with younger people, but we would never see it on now, because network executives, those pigs, they would never do a show with four older women. It is not sexy enough, who is going to walk around in the thong? Who cares! But that show is funny and it holds up to this day,” she said passionately over the phone. “Lucille Ball would never get a show on now. A 40-year-old woman and a housewife? You just would never really see that today, and it is a shame, because it (television today) is not as funny … they’ll tell you that there isn’t a market for female driven shows, and I just don’t buy it.”

After a busy 2005 – which included her filing for divorce from her husband Matthew Moline in September, although Griffin told Metroline the two are attempting to reconcile – the comedienne may have an even busier 2006, as filming for the second season of “My Life on the D-List” begins in February.

And then there’s taking the time to fulfill her New Year’s resolution.

“I need to eat more donuts. I am sick of having only one box a week. I need to eat like three or four, that would finally be a new year’s resolution I could keep,” she said. “Here is the thing, when I go to KK (Krispy Kreme), I get the hot ones, but I got a tell ya, I normally am not a glazed-raised fan. But when they are hot, you can’t resist them. Now, what I don’t like about the Kreme, is I think their other donuts suck. So, when it comes to the other (kinds of) donuts, I gotta go with the Dunkin (Donuts). If you can get a hot, honey-dipped Munchkin, forget about it, game over – stick a fork in me I am done.”

She added that in Manhattan, donut hunting can be frustrating because “you can’t get a hot Dunkin Donut because they ship them all in from the boroughs.”

“And even if you go to a real Dunkin Donuts where they make them, you have got to go at 4 in the morning where you hope that the guy who makes them isn’t in a bad mood and hiding all of the good ones that are hot, hidden in the back. It’s a whole system,” she explained. “It is a lot of work to find the perfect donut, but when you do it is sweet heaven.”

Donut searches aside, Griffin said she will spend most of the new year doing what she does best.

“Just getting fired more,” she said with a sarcastic sigh, “just burning more bridges until I live on an island: an island called Bitterness.”

But a bittersweet comedic pill for Griffin fans to eagerly swallow.

And, over the next several weeks, the gay-friendly comedienne will be performing a series of shows in and around Connecticut. On Jan. 21, she will perform at The Ridgefield Playhouse for Movies and the Performing Arts beginning at 8 p.m. Tickets, at $75, can be purchased through the playhouse box office at 438-5795 or online at ridgefieldplayhouse.org. Then, early next month the comic returns to Connecticut to play The Cabaret Theatre at Mohegan Sun in Uncasville from Wednesday, Feb. 1 to Saturday, Feb. 4, with performances at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday; and a 7 and 10 p.m. show on Saturday. Tickets are $35 and available from the Mohegan Sun box office and Ticketmaster.