Kathy Griffin's Celebrity Run-Ins

by Kathy Griffin

When I call my good friend Rosie a “connector,” it’s not just about someone who introduces me to famous people. What Rosie has is a skill for joining people together who are likely to develop meaningful bonds. If it weren’t for Rosie, I wouldn’t have met Cher, the Estefans, Bette Midler, or Rachael Ray, and these are now some of my closest pals in show business. She’s like a chef, and her friends are ingredients she likes to toss together to make something special. That’s how insightful and smart she is. But she makes good on those promised connections, too. A lot of people like to say, “Oh, you should meet my friend so-and-so,” and then never do anything. She makes good on it, and that’s rare.

  We met in the mid-’90s when she was in Los Angeles taping episodes of her breakout hit of a daytime talk show, and Suddenly Susan snagged her for a guest role as herself. I’ll never forget her telling me I was funny. After that I appeared on The Rosie O’Donnell Show several times, and if there was ever an instance when the show was already fully booked with guests, she’d say, “Come on as a surprise.” One time, she even flew my mother and father out to New York, and they’d never been to the Big Apple in their lives. She put them up at Le Parker Meridien and had them make an appearance on her talk show, and to this day, Mom talks about that trip and Rosie’s generosity. Rosie believed in me from the jump, and it was a serious boost to my confidence as a stand-up.

  Of course, I love that she’s outspoken and a showbiz pioneer as an out lesbian, but there was a moment from that Suddenly Susan taping that really hit home to me how unique her place was in the entertainment world.

  We were filming scenes on Rosie’s talk show set, with her audience still there—she’d asked them to stick around for us, and they happily agreed—and as we were getting ready to shoot, Rosie expressed dissatisfaction with a line in the script with a reference to the gay community.

  “I won’t say it,” she said to someone on staff.

  This staffer said, “Well, I wrote it, and I’m gay.” Rosie wasn’t out yet. And I’ll never forget this, she was still miked up, so every crew member could hear her (but not the audience), and she said, “Look, I know. I’m gay. It’s not that I don’t know what being gay is. But I have small children, and I go and do stand-up comedy on the weekends in places where I would literally fear for my life and the lives of my kids if I became the openly gay talk show host and stand-up comic. It’s different for me as a mom.” Remember, this is just before Ellen DeGeneres announced herself as a lesbian but didn’t have kids or a daytime talk show with which she was trying to win over heartland America.

  Rosie’s words struck me, because it meant she was out to everyone she worked with, and obviously to friends, but not to the world. It was as if she’d created this experimental staging area for herself from which she could plot the right moment to come out, and she did near the end of her show’s run. I remember showbiz friends calling Rosie a hypocrite, pretending to have a crush on Tom Cruise and such. But secretly, I knew there’d be a bigger power to her coming out when it was on her own terms as a super successful TV figure. And it was indeed powerful, and I was incredibly proud of her.

  She opened my eyes to the timing of a gay joke, and I feel as if I did the same for her when I helped her reconcile with Joan Rivers. Joan would make jokes about Rosie in a way that, let’s just say, Rosie did not care for. She used to say to me, “How can you be friends with Joan Rivers? She’s so mean.” I would keep telling her she could feel however she wanted about Joan but that Joan had done so many things for me that I would always love her. Eventually Rosie saw Joan somewhere, walked up to her, and said, “I don’t know what to do. Kathy Griffin has nothing but nice stories about you.” And they made up on the spot. When Joan passed away, Rosie and I attended her funeral together with Rachael Ray and Kristin Chenoweth. Rosie even was kind enough to arrange a car and all the logistics for that day. Always connecting. That’s who she is.

  ORMAN, SUZE

  Financial Guru, Girlfriennnd, Approved!

  You haven’t lived until you’ve had a Lesbian Super Bowl Party. There, I said it!

  What I mean by that is my good pal Suze Orman and her wife, KT, were in Los Angeles coincidentally the day of the Madonna Super Bowl. I don’t know who the teams were, and I don’t care. I was just happy to have two of my favorite ladies visiting for the day.

  Suze has been a genuine-not-Hollywood-but-actual-friend since I threw myself at her mercy and cold-called her. Ten years ago, I was dealing with a complicated and very personal financial issue. Without skipping a beat, she said, “Come to my office and bring all the financials you want me to see.” This woman knows her stuff. She lives it. She is a true believer and is on a mission to help people from all walks of life make the emotional connection between their financial issues and their everyday life choices.

  Anyway, back to Madonna. Suze and I were goofing around holding hairbrushes singing “Like a Prayer” alongside Madonna. My boyfriend was looking at us like we were insane. We may have been making fun of him for being a heterosexual male just a little bit. When we sat down, Suze held up her phone and showed him an e-mail she had received from her friend Pat Riley. What?!? It was THE Pat Riley, legendary NBA player, coach, and at the time, president of the soon-to-be-championship-winning Miami Heat. I was confused. “What’s Pat Riley e-mailing you for?” Suze told me Pat Riley had contacted her to make videos to speak directly to the players’ moms. Not only do I find it hilarious that the implication here is that these big, muscular tough guys ultimately listen to their moms, but might possibly also be a little afraid of them. When I brought this up to Suze, I asked her if these players weren’t dealing with big-time agents, accountants, stockbrokers, and so on.

  “Girlfriennnd, Pat Riley knows how to train these young men into champions, and he knows that I know how to speak to PLAYERS’ MAMAS!” she said in her signature singsongy voice. I’ve never heard of these supposedly famous basketball players, but she explained that she made videos for the moms of Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade, and some guy named LeBron James. Is it possible that my bright-collared-jacket-wearing, firm-but-loving giver of the “Suze Smackdown” friend was helping Pat Riley assemble “The Big Three” into an NBA championship team in Miami? I imagine Suze making these videos, looking right into the camera, and getting right to the point, speaking directly to these women. Maybe something like, “This is the sum of money the coach has in mind, and this is how it’s going to work: your son will be playing in a little state called Florida, which—guess what, my dear?—has no state income tax, which means he can keep a lot of it, invest most of it, and here’s my number, and you call me…” Let me see if I’m getting this straight (pun intended). My gal Suze somehow was instrumental in putting together a championship dynasty? Is there nothing this woman can’t do? Suze Orman, NBA commissioner? Suze Orman, president 2020?? Just think about it. Oh, and shocker, she and her wife also remodel and flip houses. (It’s also my understanding that this LeBron James character was even able to segue into feature films.)

  Suze, I issue a challenge to you: It’s time for you to assemble the next “Big Three.” Kathy Griffin, Ryan Gosling, Tyson Beckford. We’ll call it the “Big Three-Way.”

  OSBOURNE, OZZY

  He’s Really Like That

  In May of 2013, I hosted an auction/concert charity event benefiting women, thrown by rocker extraordinaire Linda Perry, who was able to get everyone from Natasha Bedingfield to Sia to the great Ozzy Osbourne. Now, as long as I’ve known Sharon, believe it or not, I’d never met Ozzy. I’ve seen Ozzy in concert with and without Black Sabbath, and let me tell you something, I do not think Sharon Osbourne gets enough credit. She is by far the most powerful and successful female rock-and-roll manager and has broken the glass ceiling for women in that part of the rock-and-roll industry in a way that is nothing short of dazzling.

  I knew Sharon would be the perfect person to approach regarding how I should give her client, Ozzy, the best intro. We all know that Sharon is deliciously unfiltered, so i
t will not surprise you to hear her response: “Just get up there and say, ‘This fucker better give the performance of his life because it’s for an amazing cause.’” Easy.

  I made my way to the Beverly Hilton green room, which is pretty small for a venue that regularly hosts so many high star-wattage events, and Ozzy was in there running around, chatting with his band, and sounding incomprehensible because I can never understand what he’s saying.

  I said, “Hi, Ozzy. I’m Kathy Griffin, and I’m hosting the event. Since I’m going to be introducing you, is there anything in particular you’d like me to say?”

  He was speaking fluent Ozzy, which I did not take in high school, so I admit I could not understand a lot of what he said except for when he would keep repeating, with his very thick accent, the word “Ah-MY-zing!”

  I said to him, “So perhaps … ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the amazing Ozzy Osbourne’???”

  He just kept saying, “Ah-MY-zing!”

  Then I said, “Sorry to be that person, but can I get a selfie with you?”

  Once the camera was out, he grabbed me, gave the full-on Ozzy smile-sneer, and again said, “AH-MY-ZING!”

  As if that wasn’t Ozzy enough, something else caught my eye. You often hear about rock and rollers having these crazy riders in their contracts with various specific and bizarre demands. In a room filled with typical, boring dressing room fare, such as a couple of bagels, a coffeepot, and a few bottles of water, I happened to notice something that had an actual Post-it on it. It was a pyramid of six little 5-hour Energy bottles and a note that said, “Don’t touch. For Mr. Osbourne only.” I had my intro! “With thirty hours of energy and an AH-MY-ZING amount of talent, ladies and gentlemen, the AH-MY-ZING Ozzy Osbourne!” And with that, he flicked the switch! He’s one of those. He didn’t just get through his set. He blew the roof off the place from “Paranoid” to “Crazy Train.” I even barked at the moon.

  PALTROW, GWYNETH

  Beautiful Pill, Entrepreneurial Stork

  There have been a few celebrities who’ve been a cloud of exasperation for me for so long, they should win some kind of longevity award. Oprah is one. Paltrow is another. There’s an arc to our relationship, even though I’ll bet she doesn’t even know we’re in one. Call it a subconscious intercoupling, if you will.

  When I first encountered her at the VH1 Fashion Awards back in the early 2000s, unable to join in the fun with her mate Stella McCartney—who had no problem answering my silly red carpet questions—she was the kind of snooty celebrity whose antics helped me build a comedy career. I hated her, I loved her, I got comedy out of her. But at a certain point, you want a response. So years later, when I did a guest spot on Glee, she was there the same day I was, filming a different episode. I found her trailer, burst in, and said, “Paltrow?!? I’m here!”

  She was looking at a magazine and getting her hair and makeup done, so I got the bare minimum, a “Hi.” Look, I get it. She was in the zone, and me acting like her Make-A-Wish kid was finally here was probably a bit much. So later, I got a copy of a cheesy full-page picture of me in some tabloid magazine, went back to Paltrow’s trailer when she wasn’t there, and found her assistant and said, “I’m going to leave a present for your boss.” This very statement may have sounded ominous to this visibly uncomfortable assistant. I added, “I need a Sharpie.” He reluctantly handed over the pen, and I ripped out the full-page picture of myself. I proceeded to give her the gift of a lifetime. I wrote in big block letters over the entire page, “DEAR GYNNETTH, I WANT TO GIVE YOU AN AUTOGRAPH FROM YOUR PERSONAL IDOL. LOVE, KATHY GRIFFIN.” I hoped she’d find the misspelling of her name amusing, since I’d read somewhere that she couldn’t stand it when people misspelled her name. Push their buttons first, I say! Well, I got zero response. Did I misread our semiconscious thruppling? Did she go straight to the cops with what she perceived to be evidence of stalking?

  The following year, I saw her at an industry party, and I couldn’t resist. I went up to her and said, “What’s up, Goopy? Everything goopin’? Everything gooptastic?” And finally, a decade after the frickin’ VH1 Fashion Awards, she just gave in and laughed. She figured out how deep I really am. I approached her the way I approach every gig: if the audience laughs, I end the show. If they don’t laugh, I’ll stay up there for five goddamn hours until I hear it. Audiences have known it for decades. Now Goopy knows.

  PAUL, AARON

  Jesse Pinkman … Thanks to ME

  You’d be surprised to learn who had a small role as Zipper in an episode of Suddenly Susan. It was a certain teenager named Aaron Paul. Breaking Bad? Ever heard of it? Yeah, I discovered him. Although I knew the character of Zipper could not continue on Suddenly Susan, I know raw talent when I see it.

  I remember it like it was yesterday: he came on to our set with the intensity of a big cat, but he didn’t know what to do with it all. You could just tell it was going to be trouble. We were a sitcom, not some brooding basic cable drama, and the studio brass weren’t happy. They were going to can him, but I got on the horn with the bigwigs and said, “I can straighten him out! He’s a kid! Let me at him. Kathy Griffin’s been around. I’ve done the math. I can take him under my wing.” I stormed onto the set, grabbed Aaron, and pulled him aside like a teacher with some delinquent. “Oh, well, heil Hitler, bitch. We’re all on the same page. The one that says, if I can’t kill you, you’ll sure as shit wish you were dead. Look, whatever you’re trying to cook up here, Captain, can it. We’re not some lab where you can just try things out. You haven’t earned your own trailer just yet, bucko. A show like this requires chemistry, so you’d better dial back the intensity. You look like someone poisoned your girlfriend’s kid, for Chrissakes. So shape up and learn to love working in Burbank, or the next thing you know you’ll be a crazy handful o’ nothin’ in some shithole in Albuquerque, where there’s a lot of uncertainty, bitch. The sky is just as blue here, and the chicken places are better. Do we have a deal, you pathetic junkie? Answer me!” Then I threw him on the floor of the Suddenly Susan set, choked him out until he finally pointed to his pocketful of meth, which I promptly threw into the Warner Brothers decorative fountain next to the Friends set.

  Okay, honestly, I have ZERO recollection of ever meeting Aaron Paul when he was only nineteen. I’m too famous. But he still owes me a lifetime of gratitude for putting him on the map.

  PELOSI, NANCY

  Speaker of the House, Secret KG Ally

  Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi have taken enough sustained smearing from mean, backward Republican men to last a few lifetimes. And I think I have it bad with pissed-off celebrities!

  The first time I met Congresswoman Pelosi, she was unfailingly nice, complimenting me and talking about the importance of humor. In my opinion, a much better understanding of a solid chick comic than Paul Ryan ever will have! So when I was scheduled to go on a talk show on which I knew I’d have to defend her (don’t come at me, Fox News, for respecting this woman’s accomplishments, for God’s sake!), I made sure I had my talking points ready on what a badass she is in the House of Representatives. She runs her caucus like a mob boss. My D.C. pals tell me that she’s loyal as long as you don’t cross her. Check and check. I respect her because at seventy-plus years old, she is still working her ass off. Oh, and she has a killer body. Does any of this ring a bell? I’m just saying … we have a lot in common. Kathy Griffin, Speaker of the House. Just think about it.

  The great story, though, is when I was at an awards season party and a distinguished, handsome, gray-haired gentleman walked up and said, “Hi, I’m Paul Pelosi. My wife and I would love to say hi to you,” I said, “Oh my gosh, I’d love to say hi to the Speaker!” So I went over to their table, and it was a power group, for sure: the Pelosis, Apple CEO Tim Cook, a few other true titans of industry, and some chick with hair like Ginger’s from Gilligan’s Island. Pelosi and I exchanged pleasantries, and then she said, “Have you met Lana?”

  Suddenly it clicked who the redhead was. �
��Oh,” I said. “You’re the singer Lana Del Rey.”

  Lana made a forced cough sound and said, “Um, I heard what you said about me.”

  My mind started racing—is she even in the act?—and then she continued, “Uh … for your information, putting me on the worst-dressed list was preposterous because that dress was…”

  Oh, okay. I get it. Fashion Police. At that time, I had done one episode, and not only that, someone else had put her on the worst-dressed list. It wasn’t even my doing. I tried to explain this to her, but Lana’s anger appeared to be escalating. Then Nancy Pelosi stepped in to do what she’s had to do countless times in the Capitol: mediate. She said, “Lana, dear, it was a joke. Kathy tells jokes! She goes around the country and makes people laugh. I’m sure it wasn’t a comment on you personally.”

  I said, “Lana, I think you’re a very good singer. I do. A little dark, but…”

  Nancy Pelosi kept defending me at the same time she was trying to comfort Lana: “The thing about fashion and humor is that they’re both essential in their way, as is music. And Lana, dear, people are going to make jokes. If I could tell you all the things I’ve heard in the Senate!”

  I loved how the Speaker was stepping in to soothe a hotheaded celebrity! It kind of emboldened me. It made me want to continue the dialogue with Little Miss Sourpuss, although I might have taken a little advantage of who was in my corner.

  “Lana,” I said, “do you know who this woman is? I doubt it. So why don’t you practice your scales and enjoy your meal?”

  Pelosi said, “Now Kathy, dear, that’s not going to help.”

  Lana sat there, silently stewing. I felt like dragging in more big guns, so I looked at the Apple honcho and said, “And what kind of gay MAN are YOU, Tim Cook? Can’t even help me out? Lana Del Rey wants to kill me! She even refers to herself as a ‘Suicide Girl’ in the song ‘She’s Not Me’! What’s next, ‘Homicide Girl’?”