So when the crew began filming again, they never knew that Matt would arrive at the house half an hour before the call time, and he’d leave twenty minutes after they left. It was excruciating, really tough. At one point I took him back for a few months, then we’d be back in therapy, and I’d believe him for a while and be optimistic, and then I’d catch him in another lie. It wasn’t some coldhearted decision where I hated him and he just showed up to support me. I was hoping for the best the whole time. And that went through the entire season.
I can hear the naysayers now: I was filming a reality show, but deceiving people. Well, I honestly never felt that, because number one, the show is not A&E’s Intervention. It’s not a show that claims to help people. Just like my act is given to exaggeration, the show films heightened comedic experiences in my life. My first responsibility is to make people laugh, and a show where I’m crying or hashing out serious problems in my marriage with my husband is not what an audience signs on for. It’s not Breaking Bonaduce.
Well, as filming on season two came to a close, things hadn’t been very good between us. We hadn’t been getting along, and we were both starting to realize it wasn’t going to work out. Pessimism was finally settling in with me. Matt seemed emotionally out the door. But a part of me still saw him the same way I did the first day we met, or the day he proposed, or the day we had some other great time together.
We had our wrap party for season two in Vegas, because we’d been shooting my appearance at a very D-listy casino outside of the city. Matt was there and when it came time to make the party happen, he was at the height of his greatness. He got all the food and the booze, and when people started showing up in my suite, he was a wonderful host, making people laugh, telling stories, and I was proud to be with him. It was the guy I’d said yes to on that beach in Mexico.
The next morning, though, we had a really bad fight. I honestly don’t even remember what it was about, but it was a doozy. Matt said, “I can’t take this anymore. It’s over. I’m going back to LA and moving my stuff out for good.”
I was sobbing hysterically, and I had a show to do that night, so I couldn’t follow him. One of the crew saw Matt get on the shuttle for the airport, and I made some excuse for him. The crew still knew nothing. Thankfully I had a couple of nice gays with me and they both said, “Kathy, you’ve got a show tonight. Focus on that. Matt’s not coming back today. We’ll stay with you one more night and fly home with you tomorrow.”
They kept me company, and it was really wonderful and comforting. When I got back to LA, Matt already had been there with his sister and her boyfriend and they had taken all of his stuff. Matt and I made an appointment to get together and talk that night. We sat down and I was hysterically crying and despondent, and he said something at that moment that was in retrospect probably the kindest thing he could have done.
“Kathy, it’s not going to work,” he said. “Stop trying to make it work. I don’t love you anymore.”
“I want to try again!” I said, rattling off all manner of ideas I had for trying to prop this thing up one more time.
“We’ve tried everything,” he said. “It’s really, really over.”
When he walked out the door, I just fell apart. But it’s what I had to hear. I needed him to sit me down and say in no uncertain terms that it was done, and that he didn’t want me to try anymore. He hadn’t wanted to try for a while. “Now it’s just ridiculous,” he’d said. “You’re trying to force something.”
He was right. One of my worst character flaws is that it takes me too long to “get” things. I have to be hit over the head with a sledge-hammer. It is this very quality of never accepting defeat, going against the odds and not always listening to reason that while serving me so well in my career, has screwed me over in my love life.
I was still a wreck when later that night I asked a friend to come over for support. He helped me out in a great way by saying, “Okay, you’ve got to cut Matt off entirely now. You have to act like Matt is not reachable.” That’s because even through our separations, I’d call him if I missed him, or he’d call me if he missed me, or if I’d forgotten where I put something in the house I’d contact him. All those little bits of knowledge that I’d counted on him for—facts about meetings I’d had, who worked where, who said what when, computer know-how, the way something operated—I was suddenly worried about. My friend said, “There’s nothing we can’t figure out ourselves.”
That talk with my friend was very liberating. Because I would never see Matt again. Our divorce was finalized in May 2006. I had begun the process of moving on.
Looking back at it all, I really had been a complete pussy about realizing it was over, even though in the back of my mind the trust that should exist between a married couple was 100 percent shot. I wish I had one of those Stella Got Her Groove Back moments where I turned to him and said, “Get out!” But in the end it was Matt who had to hit me over the head with the fact that we were through.
It was an equally hard decision to appear on Larry King Live and go public with the details of our breakup. I don’t know if that was the right thing to do then, but my ego just couldn’t take the speculative chatter—in the public and even from friends—that somehow the old battle-ax nightmare Kathy Griffin ran her poor, sweet husband into the ground until he had to leave. Certainly there are women classier than I who would have taken what happened between us to the grave, but my whole life has been putting my reality out there and owning up to it. For better or for worse.
My daughters Emmy and Emily.
My Life on the D-List, or as I like to call it, “My Little Ghetto Fake Network Show,” has actually been the best thing that’s ever happened to my career. Through the show, I’ve gotten to meet some of the greatest people, and have experienced some truly hilarious moments. It’s led to some high points in my life, and been there to capture some low ones, too. Let’s start with the highs.
Hi, Oprah. I didn’t notice you walk into the room. You and Gayle came in at a great time. I was just about to start my EMMY STORIES!
It was the summer of 2006, and season two of The D-List had been airing on Bravo, when I hopped on Rosie O’Donnell’s gays-and-lesbians-and-children-of-gays-and-lesbians-and-the-straight-people-who-love-them cruise to Alaska to perform. Now, even when I was on a sitcom for four years, I was never one of those girls who got up at 4 a.m. on Emmy nomination day and got my hair and makeup done so a crew could film me jumping up and down when they announce the nominees at 5 a.m. It never occurred to me in a gazillion years I’d ever be nominated for anything, much less an Emmy award. Nothing against the kind citizens who once gave me the key to Louisville, Kentucky, or the kind citizens of the gay porn community, who gave me an Honorary Gay for a Day trophy. Represent!
Well, I’m sleeping in my cabin on Rosie’s ship when I wake up and see the light on my phone blinking. Jessica had called from her cabin and left me a message. I played it back and listened to her very casually, very dryly go through the litany of things I had to do that day.
“Okay, Rosie wants you to go to her room in a couple of hours because you two are going to go over the show later. We’re supposed to go watch some iceberg, and I’m not sure I want to stay up for it. The dry cleaning’s going to be ready on Thursday. And congratulations, you got nominated for an Emmy. Bye!”
I was like, “What?? ”
I called her back. “What was that last part again?”
In her uniquely deadpan Jessica delivery, she said, “Yeah, right, that’s so great.”
I had to say, “Jessica, I think that should have been the first thing on your message! And I think you should have knocked on my door and woken me up! Hello?”
Of course, I was convinced it wasn’t real. Somehow there’d been a typo. Kathie Lee Gifford was the real nominee. There’s a sound engineer somewhere named Katey Griffith who got a technical nomination. It didn’t help that I was on a freakin’ boat in Alaska where my cell phone wouldn’t work, a
ll the while trying to find a landline that didn’t have static.
Once I got the nomination confirmed from about seven different people, I believed it. And man, was I over the moon. Really bursting with excitement. I called Mom and Dad first, of course, and they were thrilled. I was flooded with emails from the network, and of course the mucky-mucks like Jeff Zucker and Jeff Gaspin who couldn’t wait to tell me how they knew all along.
The reaction across the entertainment world was both clichéd and surprising. I knew I’d get plenty of “She’s horrible! Why her?” reactions. But I can’t tell you how many coldhearted old-timers—agents, publicists, veteran actors, people from my Groundlings days—who said to me some variation of: “Out of all the people I know who have been kickin’ around, you really deserve this.” That was my favorite thing. Nobody was saying I was going to win. I mean, nobody thought I’d beat Extreme Makeover: Home Edition for Best Reality Program, including me. But it was really nice to hear from people whom I had known from around the way—casting directors who told me to get a nose job, agents who’d told me I was too fat, my peers who had surpassed me in television—that whether they’d ever liked me or not, I’d worked hard and deserved to be recognized.
Plus, simply put: The show was good!
Now, the reality show category I was nominated in is part of the Creative Arts Emmys, not the main draw Emmys you see in prime time where mercury poison-sensitive Jeremy Piven wins every fucking year for Entourage. The Creative Arts Emmys are for the technical awards and guest performers on series. And, obviously, the ugly stepchild that is reality programming. It does, however, have a red carpet, but more like a red rug. You’ll recognize some of your Grey’s Anatomy faves, as long as your faves are Nurse #4, Dead Patient On Bloody Gurney, or Respected Character Actor Whose Name You Don’t Know. That meant the event I was going to was in the afternoon, where there’s only one camera covering the ceremony, and E! runs a clip show from it that no one watches. In fact, in a truly inspired comedy moment, one of the Bravo network executives said, “Oy. We call them the Shmemmys.”
But it’s a nomination. Where do I sign, lady?
The other thing I didn’t know was that I’d have to sit there for hours while sixty-six awards were handed out before they got to Best Reality Program, the second to last category. That’s a lot of time to sit and think about how you’re not going to be walking up onstage. It doesn’t mean, of course, that when they get to your category, you don’t all of a sudden have a strong desire to win. When they read The D-List as a nominee, along with Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, The Dog Whisperer, Antiques Roadshow, and Penn & Teller: Bullshit, I couldn’t help but think, What if I hear my name?
With no expectation to win, I assumed I’d be pretty calm and collected when they got to our category. But let me tell you, that all goes out the window when the presenter announces your name with the other nominees. Sure enough, it was Ty Pennington and his Oprah-beloved show that won, and I couldn’t help but be disappointed. Their posse all screamed, and as I turned around and looked back—cause I was in the front row—I couldn’t get over how big their group was: there were more than two dozen people running down the aisle. Well, the Bravo people were all behind me, and at that point I just wanted to make them laugh, and maybe even make the audience laugh. There’s this period of about ten seconds when the applause has died down, and you’re waiting for all these people to make their way from row thirty to the stage. I wasn’t mic’d, so I just started screaming, “This is bullshit! I was robbed!” I flipped off the Extreme Makeover folks, and said to Jessica, who came with me, “Get my bag! We’re outta here!” It was all very dramatic, especially because my dress had a train that dragged behind me as I stomped off, and I could hear the twenty-five people behind me laughing their asses off. I think the rest of the audience probably thought I was a psycho bitch, but I didn’t care. I “stormed off,” diva-style.
I didn’t even go to the Governor’s Ball, but instead went straight to In-N-Out Burger, thinking, Triumph!
Weeks later, I ran into one of the interior designers from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, who let me know in no uncertain terms that he did not think what I did was gracious. I said, “Dude, I was kidding. How could you not know something so over the top like that was a joke?”
It was then that I learned how little a sense of humor Hollywood truly has. So I told the guy to fuck off.
Well, the little show that could came through again, and we were up for an Emmy once more for season two. Only now I decided I was in it to win it. I campaigned every waking minute, and would openly beg television academy members to vote for the show. Bravo had pretty much stopped promoting The D-List, so I bought my own billboard above the Mel’s Diner sign in Hollywood for one month. It cost me $50,000, but I wanted this show, which I thought was good, to have a shot. Friends in show business thought I was crazy, but my take was, nobody else was going to do it, and this was a major opportunity.
The network started telling me, “We really think you have a shot.” There was all this talk of “good feelings” about it. It seemed that our Iraq episode, where I went to Baghdad and Tikrit to entertain the troops—a show that could not have happened without the help of my good friend Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale—was impressing everyone. I was certainly proud of it, and you certainly weren’t going to see something like that on Antiques Roadshow.
Nevertheless, I attended the afternoon Shmemmys absolutely convinced I was not going to win, that it would be “Extreme Fuckover” for the third year in a row. With me were Jessica, plus new Team Griffin members Tiffany, my second assistant (because I’m that high maintenance), and tour manager Tom. Also with me was a game plan for what crazy bullshit I was going to pull if I lost again, since I felt like I got some good comedy mileage out of my fake fit the year before. This year, I thought, if I lose, I’m going to run up onstage and start an acceptance speech before Extreme Makeover and their boatload of people knows what hit ’em. I know the audience will get really uncomfortable, my peeps will laugh, and it’ll be a great Andy Kaufmanesque moment, if I really sell it.
But what I’d also planned for was what would happen if I won.
Because then I’d have everybody’s attention legitimately.
I wanted something watercooler-worthy. So the day of the Emmys, I emailed three really funny writer friends, which included a guy named Eric Friedman, who wrote for the Disney Channel show Zoe 101 starring Jamie Lynn Spears. The reason I asked them to help was because I’m not really good at sound-bite-style comedy, that kind of extreme short form, one-liner stuff. And for an awards show, you don’t want to ramble, like I do in my act. You want something short and sweet. Or in my case, short and incredibly shocking.
Well, Eric came up with something I thought was hilarious and subversive:
A lot of people come up here and they thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. He didn’t help me a bit. If it was up to him, Cesar Milan would be up here with that damn dog. So all I can say is suck it, Jesus, this award is my god now!
I thought it was laugh-out-loud funny. I read it to Mom beforehand. “Well, I think it’s funny,” she said, “but I think you’re gonna have trouble.”
“Good. Perfect. That’s exactly what I’m looking for.”
I can’t remember if my mom rolled her eyes or not. Probably.
On the red carpet, as I entered the awards show, I got asked about being upset last year that I had lost.
“I wasn’t upset, I just wanted to cause a bit of a scene,” I said. “But watch this year, it’s going to be good either way. Trust me, you’ll want to cover it.”
I wanted the press at the Shmemmys that night to think they needed to stick around for my category—even if it was sixty-seventh or whatever—because something might happen. Even in the green room, I had Jessica running interference, making sure celebrities didn’t leave after they’d made their appearance or won their award. Apparently
she said to Seth Green, “If I were you, I wouldn’t leave. Kathy’s going to say something you’re going to want to be here for.”
My category finally came up, and I was so convinced I was going to lose that I had my right leg up like a pointer dog, ready to run on stage to horn in on Ty Pennington’s moment. Then they announced my name. My name! We won! Now I was going up onstage in complete shock! And what was so wonderful was that we got a huge round of applause. As much as I love to make fun of Hollywood and everyone in it for being cynical, I really felt like the people in that room—and these were my D-list peers, this being the afternoon Shmemmys, not the A-list nighttime Emmys—were happy for me.
But I could also feel an anticipation like, “Uh-oh, what’s she gonna say?” Which I loved. I took a second to recover a little bit because I wanted to do Eric’s speech justice. I didn’t want to dishonor it by screwing it up. I said it verbatim, and it got a big laugh, and I thought it was awesome. That was on a Saturday afternoon, and I enjoyed myself the rest of the weekend. Everyone I ran into was congratulatory toward me, and I was prepared to get all settled in and wait for a nice mention in the trades about my hilarious speech.
Monday morning, still in the glow of victory, with my Emmy curled up next to me in bed, one of my attorneys called.
“So what happened this weekend?”
“Well, you’re not going to believe it, but I WON!”
“Yeah. What happened?”
Official Book Club Selection Page 23
