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Who’s That Girl?
Comedienne Kathy Griffin is bold and brash -- and barely recognizable to some. But that’s just how this self-proclaimed D-lister likes it. By James Sterngold. Photographs by Michael Kelley.
It’s rush hour on Highland Avenue in Hollywood, and cars are lurching through a jammed intersection as a motley crew of locals loiters on a grungy corner. A man with dreadlocks complains loudly to no one in particular; a pack of skateboarders attempts to navigate the jagged, broken concrete that passes for a sidewalk; and a petite redhead wearing a floor-length purple chiffon gown waves a gold statuette somewhat crazily in front of a graffiti- covered bus stop. She looks like an exile from the Kodak Theatre, which is located less than a mile from here. Just another wannabe, perhaps.
But wait, you think. Haven’t I seen her? Every so often, a car laboring through the intersection pauses, and the occupants, invariably a pair of young men, roll down a window and shout “We love you!” to the glitzy refugee.
Two teenage girls who are walking by stop, mouths agape, and try to puzzle it out. Visiting from Kentucky, they wonder if they’ve finally caught their first celebrity sighting. “I think I’ve seen her on Comedy Central or something,” says one, but her friend remarks that she’d also mistakenly thought she had seen one of the bunglers from the Jackass movies the day before.
Then comes the “aha!” moment. Another car slows, and the gregarious passenger shouts, “Oh my God, Kathy, you’re wonderful! I love your show. When is it back on? I love your dogs too. They’re sooo cute.”
And it hits you: The diminutive diva in the ball gown is none other than comedienne Kathy Griffin, preparing for a not-so-glamorous sidewalk photo shoot. Though Griffin is a self-proclaimed D-lister (her reality TV show on Bravo is even called Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List), her fan following is passionate, almost cultish. She loves to poke fun at her supposedly minor celebrity status, and yet, the more she talks about the vast gap between herself and the top-tier stars, the more popular she becomes. She may be the only star who loves it when people, like the Kentucky girls, struggle to recognize her.
“That’s nothing,” says Lisa Tucker, an executive producer of D-List. “A reporter interviewed her for an article earlier this year and thought she was [NewsRadio actress] Vicki Lewis.”
 It’s hard to imagine what Kathy Griffin would not do for a laugh. Though she’s tart and sometimes downright acerbic in her take-no-prisoners style of humor, she’s beloved by a sizable circle of fans for her merciless gibes about celebrities, particularly those who spend a lot of time in rehab. But, really, anyone will do. Oprah Winfrey and Ryan Seacrest are among her favorite punching bags.
Controversy for her is catnip. For instance, Griffin doesn’t just point out that she has been banned from The View (twice). She brags about it.
“I want some kudos for being rebanned from The View,” insists Griffin, most recently booted for relating some details from an intimate conversation with Barbara Walters about some of Walters’s, uh, romantic habits. “I don’t know anyone else who’s been banned from The View, even once. I wish there were some sort of plaque I could get.
“That’s one of the best things about being a D-lister,” she adds. “I don’t have a reputation to tarnish.”
But it’s not just others who bear the brunt of Griffin’s lacerating wit, as she often targets herself with self-deprecating wisecracks. She seems to have no ego at all, and she joyfully accepts her status among the lower tiers of the Hollywood hierarchy. After all, this is a woman who finds being described as a public nuisance a measure of success. And by that measure, Griffin, who is 47, is indeed riding high. Her latest television special, Kathy Griffin: Straight to Hell, pulled in an impressive number of viewers. She tours continually, filling theaters and concert halls with her stand-up routine. And to the relief of her fans, her reality show began its fourth season on June 12 -- complete with much more on her dogs and her beloved mother and even featuring Steve Wozniak, the normally reclusive Apple cofounder and billionaire whom she dated. (News broke in April that the two are now “good friends.”)
Bravo, the cable network airing Griffin’s reality show, is so enthusiastic about the program that it will air nine episodes this season (plus a bonus 10th installment composed entirely of “best of ” clips). That’s an increase from the first two seasons, which had six episodes each, and from season three, which had seven.
Tucker chuckles demonically when asked if the coming season is as outrageous as the other three. She mentions some mayhem involving a chicken, which was given to Griffin as a surprise gift. (It promptly pooped on her.) Then there was the spontaneous dance-off with a fast-stepping young boy at a school in Mexico that Griffin has helped to rebuild. Not one to be outdone -- even by a preadolescent -- Griffin suddenly broke into a moonwalk for the cameras.
“Look, the deal with Kathy is that she’s just a magnet for delicious and crazy stuff,” says Tucker. “Even if we tried, we couldn’t come up with this stuff.”
Asked if it is difficult to get Griffin to engage in some of these high jinks for the cameras, Tucker laughs again. She recalls that Griffin once let a film crew sneak into her hotel room early one morning so they could catch her as her alarm clock went off. She was filmed ambling to her feet with no makeup, a bird’s nest of bed head, and puffy eyes. Most celebrities, of course, would rather eat glass than be seen in such a state. Not Griffin.
“Believe me, we never have to persuade her to do anything,” Tucker says.
But behind the shtick, the endless cracks, and the shenanigans, surely there’s a real, down-to-earth Kathy Griffin. We’ve caught glimpses of her wrestling with life’s ups and downs on the show, including the end of her marriage and the death of her father, to whom she was extremely close. I make the mistake of asking Griffin about this woman behind the celebrity. Without missing a beat, she explains that she’s genuine, and to prove it, she has decided to do what many other stars have done in recent months: confess to having a mental disorder.
“You know, I think I should come up with a different persona so people think I’m mysterious and interesting, and so that’s what people could write about,” Griffin deadpans, pointing to a magazine cover proclaiming Britney Spears’s schizophrenia.
“We were just looking at Britney on the cover of a magazine being mentally ill,” she continues. “And so, I was thinking about it, and I’m semiserious about this. But the problem is all the best illnesses have been taken. Have you noticed that? So, I think I’m going to be a hoarder.”
She adds, “It’s going to be great. I’m going to do fund-raisers and do one of those little plastic wristbands people wear. And there’ll be T-shirts.”
There’s no doubt that Griffin is as hysterical in person as she is on television. But the truly funny thing is that, in the course of a long conversation, Griffin can actually be quite serious, sometimes unexpectedly -- a reflection of the fact that, as people who know her well attest, she’s smart, has strong opinions, and is not shy about expressing them. When I ask her about shamed New York governor Eliot Spitzer, who resigned over his involvement with a prostitution ring, Griffin says she was saddened by the scandal because she thought Spitzer was a good, tough governor. What I expect to be an opportunity for a few easy quips turns into a short lecture on why, in her view, we should let politicians make policy and stay out of their bedrooms.
Politics, in fact, is a passion of Griffin’s. Tucker remembers that, on the day of the California presidential primary in February, Griffin insisted that the whole D-List crew be given time off to vote.
“I’m a total junkie on the presidential race,” Griffin says. “I follow all of it. My problem is that I’m too far to the left for anybody.
“My view is that I think everything should be legal. My utopia is like a bizarre world, where comedians run free in the wild. Anyone can say anything and never get in trouble for it!”
In trouble or not, Griffin says fun for her usually means working -- a lot. She loves doing stand-up, loves the interaction with the crowds, and loves the red-carpet interviews she does at awards shows. She even loved her (brief ) appearances on The View, though those, Griffin explains, have become a sore spot with her family.
“My mom yells at me all the time,” she says. “My parents actually had higher hopes for me. They had to lower the bar when I went into the biz. So, yeah, my mother is great, because she never takes my side in any kind of show-business dispute. She completely agrees with Barbara Walters that I should be rebanned from The View.
“She doesn’t think I should use cuss words,” Griffin adds. “She has said several times that my act would be funny if I didn’t make fun of celebrities.”
Luckily for the comedienne, her mother’s opinion seems to be in the minority. Griffin’s star is undeniably rising, and now she’s got the hardware to prove it. Last year, she won an Emmy for My Life on the D-List -- yes, that gold statuette she was vamping with on the street corner was a real Emmy -- and she picked up a prize in April from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation for best reality show.
“One thing I am really proud of with the show is that it’s really a reality show,” Griffin says. “We don’t stage things. That’s the one fight I won’t give up on. That also means you can’t predict how things will go, which drives everyone crazy.”
Has this recent critical success mellowed the potty-mouthed comedienne? Not likely.
Consider this photo shoot, for example, which is taking place in the shadows of the Hollywood Hills. Standing, sometimes barefoot, on the grimy street corner, Griffin is an amazingly good sport as she is trailed by both still photographers and teams of cameramen and sound guys poking boom mikes into her face. How many stars would put up with this kind of treatment, much less actually seek it?
At one point during the shoot, Griffin puts her Emmy on her head and sticks out her thumb as though she’s hitchhiking. As daylight fades and the temperature turns chilly, Griffin doesn’t once complain, despite her back-baring dress. A ham even when freezing, she regards every passerby as a potential audience member and does what she can to entertain them. She smiles to a school bus full of waving high-school kids. “Is that a correctional school?” she mutters out of the corner of her mouth; then she shouts back, “I love you!”
They love her, too, even if they still can’t quite place her. Later, two men in a Mustang slow down and stare. “I know her!” the driver yells. “She’s that porn star!”
That’s one thing you can say about the D-list: It’s still better than the P-list.
JAMES STERNGOLD was a domestic and foreign correspondent for the New York Times for 20 years, covering topics ranging from Wall Street to politics to the entertainment industry. His journalistic adventures have taken him from the Imperial Palace in Tokyo and prisons in California to grungy street corners in Hollywood.
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