Kathy Griffin's Celebrity Run-Ins

by Kathy Griffin

  GARCÍA, ANDY

  Cuban Royalty, Movie Star, Oh, Those Eyes …

  The greatest joy of my career has been introducing my beloved mother, Maggie, to some of Hollywood’s best and finest. But no good deed goes unpunished.

  In 2014, I concocted a scheme I was very proud of. Gloria Estefan, a close friend of mine who I met when I hosted Bette Midler’s Hulaween charity event in 2008, wanted to make my mother, Maggie, a very special invited guest at her Hollywood Bowl concert. Glo was promoting her album of standards, and since these were classic songs from Mom’s era, Glo thought she’d have a particularly good time. But you can’t entice Maggie with private box seats and backstage access to Gloria Estefan. Mostly she only wants to be anywhere that’s close to a bathroom. So I had to trick her and essentially kidnap my own mother. So I invited Maggie to my house, then made up something like, “Let’s go to church and then bingo for a glass of wine,” or whatever. We threw her in the car, and as we approached the Hollywood Bowl, I heard Maggie say, “Oh, look, there’s the Hollyw—”

  I said, “Great! Let’s go check it out!” and swerved into the entrance and up the back ramp for VIPs.

  Before we knew it, Team Estefan had arrived with a wheelchair, and may I just say, it was incredibly touching how sweetly Emilio Estefan and everyone took care of Mom. Glo took time to say hi to us before the concert, and Maggie called her “the girl singer” in the band, after which I wanted to throttle her. They then escorted us to our awesome seats, Maggie requested a bland turkey sandwich, and Glo went on to give one of her greatest live performances. My talented friend had something special in store, too: she dedicated the song “Young at Heart” to Maggie from the stage. (She even referenced Mom’s “girl singer” comment, which I loved.) Before the show was over, we wheeled Maggie backstage so she could watch Glo close out the concert from the wings. Glo literally waved good-bye to thousands of people, walked offstage, and said, “Maggie!” It was too adorable. We then went to Glo’s dressing room for a tiny get-together with her, Emilio, their daughter, Emily, a couple of key Team Estefan members, and … Andy García.

  The movie star had made a surprise appearance during the concert as a bongo player. “Maggie, I have a surprise. Look who’s standing right behind you—Andy García.”

  Mom turned to him, and Andy—piling on the charm—took her hand and said, “What a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Griffin. Don’t you look wonderful.”

  I thought, Oh, Andy, you have no idea what you’re in for. Let’s get this shitfest started.

  Maggie promptly said, “Oh, you’re the one on the bongos! You were terrific. That’s a good line of work, too, because every proper band needs a bongo player.”

  Andy’s eyes narrowed slightly.

  I said, “Mom, it’s Andy García, the movie star, who came out as a special guest to play the bongos. He’s not just some percussionist on the road. He’s a big-time actor.”

  “Mmm, I don’t think so,” she said as only Maggie could.

  I said, “Andy! Tell her some of your movies.”

  He said, “The Godfather: Part III?”

  Maggie was drawing a blank.

  He said, “When a Man Loves a Woman.”

  Maggie said, “No…”

  Andy was now starting to look at what he thought was a sweet, fluffy old lady with something closer to the hardened stare of some of his darker roles.

  I said, “You have to do better, Andy.”

  “Ocean’s Eleven,” he said.

  Maggie’s eyes lit up. “With Angie Dickinson!”

  He clarified, a tad dejectedly, “I was in the one with George Clooney.”

  Maggie: “Oh.”

  I shook my head and said, “Way to go, Andy. You were in the shitty later one. Try harder. She’s ninety-five. Mention a costar an old person would be impressed by.”

  Finally, he said, “Sean Connery?”

  My mom brightened again. “Oh my goodness,” she said. “Sean Connery? That must have been something. I hear he was quite the ladies’ man! You were in one of his films, huh?”

  Digging in, I said, “Yeah, Andy, what were you in with Sean Connery? Hmm … I can’t seem to remember.”

  Andy García, who now looked like he wanted to kill both of us, muttered, “The Untouchables.”

  I said, “Speak up?”

  He said, “I WAS IN THE UNTOUCHABLES WITH SEAN CONNERY. I WAS THE ROOKIE COP.”

  And Maggie, unaware of the dagger her words had become, said, “Oh, isn’t that nice.”

  GIFFORD, KATHIE LEE

  Christian Doppelganger, TV Hostess

  When I first subbed for her on Live! with Regis & Kathie Lee, I took a real liking to Kathie Lee’s hair and makeup person, Eve, to the extent that on a different day, when I needed to go to an event, I asked Eve if she’d do me up for it. She said yes, but only if I showed up early, when Kathie Lee wasn’t around. We arranged a time, but it didn’t matter, because as soon as I settled in, Kathie Lee barged in and very flamboyantly barked, “There’s only room for one redhead in this chair!” I was laughing, but Eve had a look on her face that said, “Really, get out. Now. Seriously.”

  Look, I know Kathie Lee’s disliked me a long time. She thinks I’m vulgar, blah blah blah, and even when I’m on TV with her and there’s laughter, she always has to get in a chastising comment. I thought she might have a legit sense of humor because she was friends with Joan Rivers, but even when the opportunity arose at a Broadway premiere for us to get a picture together—something the hyper Mario Cantone was clamoring for (“This is a picture everybody’s gonna want!”)—she wouldn’t do it under any circumstances. Fine. As for the name confusion, we’ve both had to deal with it. I’ve been called by her name and she’s been called by mine probably too many times to count.

  But it reached a very surreal apex one August day in 2015 when I began receiving a string of cryptic tweets with a Christian tinge that were inordinately heartfelt and often came accompanied with the hashtags #blessings and #heaven. “Sending you #blessings.” “He’s in #heaven.” “Dear @KathyGriffin, you are a #blessed lady who loves the lord.” Jesus-y statements like, “#LoveIsPatientLoveIsKind.” Don’t tell my mom this, but I think I may have uttered these words out loud: “Jesus, who writes this shit?” I then wondered what strange prank one of my comic friends was up to when I noticed a few of the tweets mentioned condolences. It got me thinking, and then I went straight to the Google machine. Yes, on the day that Kathie Lee’s husband Frank Gifford passed away, legions of her fans sent well-wishing tweets to me, a foul-mouthed, gay-friendly atheist. For a day, I was bathed in the holy love of grieving, religious, probably much, much older social media newbies who didn’t know Kathie Lee Gifford’s actual name. I’ll admit, the tug-of-war in my dark soul between “Awwww” and “This is hilariously wrong” was immense, and if I say that tears were streaming down my face that day, I’ll let you wonder whether they were from sadness or uncontrollable laughter. Although I am genuinely sorry for Kathie Lee’s loss, I would like to believe—since time heals—that she’d find this Twitter-support hiccup amusing in some way, but I’m guessing not. For all I know, she’s had to erase hundreds of mean tweets from crazed Lovatics, Beliebers, and Swifties looking for me. Maybe she and I should do a PSA together about the pitfalls of social media? Or maybe Kathie Lee Gifford’s superfans should ask themselves why they couldn’t take at least one moment to check the spelling of her handle. I get it … when you are typing into Twitter, auto-results will come up, and, obviously, her fans did not mean to reach out to @kathygriffin. (I have often wondered if Kathy Bates had the same surreal experience that day.)

  GOMEZ, SELENA

  Singer, Actress, Taylor Swift Girl Squad Member

  She’s a good sport, and I like her. It couldn’t have been easy to get caught lip-synching at the Jingle Ball concert and then to have a hot mic capture her saying, “WHAT THE FUCK?” in response to the screwed-up sound issue (I encourage you to look it up). I’m okay w
ith cute-as-a-button Disney girls cursing onstage. More, please.

  Anyway, I’m even more impressed that she survived dating Bieber. At the height of that craziness, I saw her on the red carpet at an awards show, and this was when the Beliebers were so out of control some were sending her death threats. She had an insane level of security, it was that bad. She walked up to me, we said hi and hugged, and then I said, “Jesus, there’s more bodyguards for you than for President Obama. What’s going on? Are you going to get assassinated tonight?”

  She laughed, like, “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA,” and then instantly turned deadly serious and said right to my face, “Don’t say that.”

  I guess that one was a little too close to the bone.

  GRANDE, ARIANA

  Singer Extraordinaire, Ponytail Extraordinaire

  Local radio station KIIS-FM throws a big, star-studded holiday concert every year in LA at the STAPLES Center, and when I attended in 2014, I was determined to get a photo with Ariana and Jessie J for a “Bang Bang” reunion in which, in my mind, OBVIOUSLY, I’d be Nicki Minaj. I could only secure pics with them individually, but when I met Ariana backstage, she could not have been nicer. I found out why. She confided to me that years ago, she’d sent me a fan letter that I read out loud on an episode of My Life on the D-List. “You probably don’t remember it,” she said, “but I love you, and I’m your biggest fan, and because we were in the same hotel once, I wrote you a letter and put it at the door of your hotel room. I was your psycho stalker! So you can’t imagine what it was like for me to be watching My Life on the D-List and see you read it!”

  Like I remember every fan letter. What am I, Bobby Sherman? So I lied. “Of course, Ariana! It’s my favorite fan letter! Now let’s get this selfie out of the way.” What cracked me up about the photo was that this twenty-year-old with flawless features was as obsessed with the angle and lighting as Barbara Walters. She was all “It’s got to be from up here” and “It’s got to look this way,” and eventually I just said, “Trust me, Ariana, not only do you look gorgeous, but I’ll be Photoshopping it so much that when it’s done, I’m going to look twenty, and you’ll look around nine years old.”

  GREEN, BRIAN AUSTIN

  Actor, Rapper, 90210h-boy

  In 1998, I hosted the Billboard Awards in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand, and afterward, there was a party with hundreds of people. I don’t know what I was thinking by going, but at least this was the age before cell phones. Nowadays, if I were hosting something big like that, I’d probably only go to a more private and controlled wingding afterward rather than some free-for-all anybody could sneak into. But I was naïve. Also, there was a hot young guy named Brian Austin Green I had my eye on, and I intended to make out with David Silver from 90210. This was no unattainable dream, either. I’d met him a couple of years earlier when I was a regular on the short-lived Roseanne sketch show that Fox scheduled to compete opposite Saturday Night Live. Anyway, when we met then, he was a guest star, and backstage we had a fun, impromptu, half-kidding make-out session. You know, for camp value. (I tell my boyfriend now, “Hey, it was the ’90s.”) This time, at the Billboards party, our eyes met, he said, “Hi,” I touched the lapel of his outsized suit, we stepped behind a large fixture, and started kissing. It’s going well, he’s moving to my neck, he’s kissing it, kissing it, and then … Yee—OWWW! He fucking bit me! That was an artery, thank you! Okay, there was no blood. I’m exaggerating, as I sometimes do. Twilight hadn’t even been written yet! I guess second base for Brian Austin Green isn’t touching my tits—an appropriate next stage of intimacy—but branding me by leaving a mark, behavior which should be left behind in frickin’ high school.

  “Ugh, you BIT ME, BRIAN!” I yelled. He was probably drunk.

  Once I got away from him, I locked eyes on Lance Bass from *NSYNC and thought, Hmmm, he’s cute. And while obviously nothing was going to happen there, which I didn’t know at the time, I’d have certainly been better off playing board games with Lance Bass than fending off the skin-ripping jaws of a ravenous B.A.G. (That’s his rap name and how he wants you to refer to him. Enough said.)

  The day after the Billboards, I had to show up for a table read at Suddenly Susan with an effing turtleneck to cover my giant hickey from a 90210 cast member and then for show taping wear beard cover makeup like an extra in Planet of the Apes.

  I heard he married a hot chick. Good for him. Time heals all wounds.

  GRIFFIN, MAGGIE

  My Mom, American Treasure, Boxed Wine Connoisseur

  Wherever I go, people want to hear the latest Maggie story. They don’t just want to hear that she’s fine; they want to know what she said, what she did, and who’s on her shite list. If I could just put her onstage in her muumuu and collect the check for her, I would. She’s that beloved.

  Very recently, she came over for a lunchtime visit and a nice bland turkey wrap—the only other alternative is a nice bland turkey sandwich. When I asked if she wanted a glass of her treasured boxed wine, she said, “No.”

  Huh?

  “Kathleen, I’m sick and tired of you spreading the word through your unfair comedy that I drink too much wine. People think I’m a wino!”

  I said, “Mom, first of all, no one uses the word wino anymore. Everyone thinks you’re adorable.”

  “Fine. I’ll have a glass of ’skey.” Whoa, Maggie just kicked it up a notch. (She has always called whiskey ’skey, just like we all call coffee ’ffee, right?) As always with Maggie, the conversation moved from politics to pop culture, and I realized there was an opportunity to broach a certain topic with her.

  “You know, Mom, everyone wants to know, since you’re such a fan of the Kardashians, what your thoughts are on Caitlyn.”

  What surprised me at first about her response was that she tried to evade the premise: “I don’t watch the Kardashians anymore! That show has just gotten too ridiculous! And I don’t want you telling people that I do watch it anymore, because that’s another lie from your comedy routine that I don’t appreciate.”

  Pause.

  Fermented, distilled truth juice kicking in …

  “But I might have watched one on Saturday.”

  Aha!

  “And I do think it’s probably better that Caitlyn decided to go back to being Bruce.”

  Um? This is the part in movies when you hear the needle scratching a record.

  “Mom, I don’t think Caitlyn went back to being Bruce,” I said a bit worriedly.

  She said, “No, no, I saw it Saturday. Bruce was back to being Bruce, with the ponytail and the whole thing, and they were all fighting like they always do on that show. And I just thought it was better that he went back to being Bruce, because it’s probably less muss and fuss with all that hair and makeup to put on every day. All the dresses and the high heels. I can’t walk in those anymore, and Caitlyn’s no spring chicken! It’s probably just easier for everybody.” (Glug. Saltine crackers. Glug.)

  That’s when it dawned on me that she had been watching a marathon of reruns of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, a programming concept, by the way, that immediately brought to mind what I believe our military refers to as “enhanced interrogation techniques.” I tried to tell her she’d been watching an old episode, that Caitlyn was absolutely still Caitlyn, and she said, “No, no, see, this is where you get in trouble, because I saw it with my own eyes on Saturday. You of all people should have known this.” Yes, why hadn’t I been made aware of this stunning reversal that took place in only a week? Scooped again by Maggie.

  “Mom,” I said, “do you think Caitlyn could have transitioned back in a week?”

  “I don’t know all the details of that newfangled modern medical hocus-pocus,” she said.

  End of discussion.

  I couldn’t help but imagine Caitlyn Jenner stomping into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center along with Candis Cayne, Kate Bornstein, Chandi Moore, Dr. Jenny Boylan (and maybe Candle and Francine Jenner) laying down the law to the hospital staff: “Hi, fellas, I
need to be back to Bruce by episode twelve. And we’re shooting eleven now, so hop to it. Let’s get the reassignment team back together. Or the re-reassignment, I should say. Thank God I can return all those dresses to Tom Ford. Look, I think we can keep this hush-hush until it’s revealed on the show, right, guys? High five!”

  Oh, Maggie, please never change. That’s why I love you.

  GROBAN, JOSH

  Singer, Player, Chosen One

  I’m a big nerd fan of Grobes. I’m his fan base. It’s not young girls. They’re a part of it, sure. But the meat of it is middle-aged women, and they’re obsessed. I’m the fan who sits and cries while watching YouTube videos of him singing “The Prayer” with Celine Dion. I watch all the videos from his tour where he says, “Would anyone like to do a duet with me?” And then some nervous girl goes up and then she sounds like Susan Boyle, and it’s a shtick, but I love it.

  I remember when I first heard him, and this is going way back. It was at the 2001 charity event where I shook hands with Presidents Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton. Music impresario David Foster came out and introduced this kid he’d discovered, whose debut album hadn’t come out yet, and frankly, he looked like he’d lost his yarmulke. I always tease him now, “You know that first night I saw you, I wondered if you’d been told you were at a bar mitzvah. You didn’t exactly look like a traditional up-and-coming pop star.” Well, of course, he started to sing, and that voice came out!