Copyright huffingtonpost
As Kathy Griffin approached the third decade of her comedy career, she had plenty worth celebrating. During her time in the public eye, she’d won two Emmys and a Grammy, written two best-selling books, achieved a Guinness World Record for her unparalleled number of comedy specials and was selling out venues the world over. She’d also garnered a loyal audience who loved her for her candid stories from her personal life as much as the juicy gossip from what she describes as her “celebrity run-ins”. In 2017, though, things hit something of a roadblock for Kathy. It’s well-documented what played out next, but in a nutshell, the comic found herself at the centre of international headlines when she posed for a picture during a photo-shoot holding a Halloween mask of Donald Trump (then still serving his first term as president) covered in ketchup, as if to suggest he’d been decapitated. The picture led to Kathy losing endorsement deals, a regular job presenting CNN’s New Year’s Eve coverage and even being put on blast by Donald Trump himself. Meanwhile, her scheduled tour dates were cancelled one by one as venues grew concerned about a potential security risk, and Kathy found herself struggling to find work. That wasn’t even the whole story, though. The furore led to Kathy being placed on the no-fly list, the Interpol list and, at one point, under federal investigation for conspiracy to assassinate the president. When she did eventually book a world tour (the Laugh Your Head Off tour, initially consisting solely of dates outside America), she found herself being detained in every airport she landed in. “I’m the most cancelled celebrity of celebrities,” she tells HuffPost UK. “Let’s not act like my cancellation was a week, try seven years. I was the most hated woman in America, and I was hated by the left, right and centre – not just the far-right, not just Trumpers. Everybody turned on me.” All these years later, the photo is something Kathy now insists she’s “actually very proud of”, even if it did come with a “very steep price”. “Now, in light of all the policies that Trump is pushing through, I want to say that photo almost seems tame – or necessary,” she claims. “It’s very gratifying to me when somebody will send me a picture of a ‘No Kings’ protest where someone has used that photo on their sign. Because [the picture] is covered by the first amendment. I want to be very clear on that.” But what many might not realise is that Kathy was grappling with a lot more during the fall-out from the controversy around her Trump photo. At the time of the initial backlash, Kathy’s sister, Joyce, was undergoing treatment for cancer, dying in September 2017. In early 2019, Kathy then disclosed that her beloved mum, Maggie, had been diagnosed with severe dementia. Kathy’s fanbase had grown to know and love Maggie through her appearances in the reality series My Life On The D-List, as well as the comedian’s US talk show, and she died a year after Kathy shared her mother’s diagnosis, at the age of 99. It was around this time that the comedian – who had never drunk an alcoholic beverage due to concerns about addiction – was privately struggling with a dependency on prescription pills, which became so severe she attempted suicide and was placed under a psychiatric hold in hospital. Then, a year into her sobriety, Kathy was diagnosed with lung cancer, for which she had surgery to remove half of her lung. Complications during this surgery dramatically altered her speaking voice – a less-than-ideal situation for someone who relied on it for their work – which she later underwent multiple procedures to correct. As if this wasn’t enough, her relationship of more than 10 years came to an end in December 2023, when she filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kathy’s experiences left her with an “extreme” case of PTSD, all while she was attempting to rebuild the career she’d worked so hard to make for herself in the decades before. She opens up about much of her struggles in her latest comedy special, the brilliantly-titled My Life On The PTSD-List (a nod to her similarly-titled, Emmy-winning reality show), which premiered last month. “After the Trump head photo, I went through everything from cancer to addiction to divorce, it was one thing after another,” she says, as candidly as ever. “I had a lot to say, so the special is long. It’s feature-length, almost. “There are a few, kind of, quasi-serious parts. Or, at least, serious topics that I try to handle with comedy. And then, a real good splashing of some Kathy Griffin celebrity run-in stories.” Throughout her hardships, Kathy says that comedy is something that kept her going (though she acknowledges this idea may be “really corny” to some). “Stand-up comedy is the best boyfriend, lover, husband I’ve ever had,” Kathy explains, quipping: “And I’ve had some crappy husbands… “But stand-up has always been there for me, even at my lowest moments.” She also points out that her experiences over the last eight years have changed her, not just as a person, but as a performer. “I wasn’t really known as a political comic, it used to be me telling my celebrity stories and my stories about my hilarious, drunk and Irish Catholic parents, and whatever guy I was banging that I wasn’t supposed to be, from, like, a boyband or whatever,” she says of her early stand-up career. “That was my act – and then boom. I kind of became a political comedian with one photo.” Her latest special is also much more confessional than fans might be used to. When putting the set together, Kathy says she found herself asking: “If this is something I deal with, is there a way to make it relatable? And if I can make it relatable, is there a way to make it funny?” Kathy hones in one moment in the special “which sounds very dark, but upon reflection, and some recovery” she was able to see the funny side of, in which she attempted suicide “by squishing myself into a vase and trying to roll into my swimming pool”. “OK, that is just funny,” she insists, attempting to lighten the mood. “Now, I am not making fun of the topic, I am just saying, it is my story, and in my case, once I came to my senses, I just went, ‘wait did I actually try to stuff myself into a vase, and ‘vase’ myself to death? That’s in the act’.” “It’s shocking!” she concedes. “But it’s so weird I had to put it in.” The adage goes that comedy is “tragedy plus time”, but for Kathy, time seemingly needn’t be too much of a factor, either. “I’m so twisted that sometimes it happens in real time,” she admits. “My mind is so constantly working on how to make everything funny, whether it’s a funny situation, a medium-funny situation or a tragedy, that pretty quickly I will be thinking of ways to try to turn that frown upside down. She continues: “I was on a 5150 psych hold for three days in a real-life psych ward. That shit’s funny to me, because I’ve made fun of every celebrity who goes on one of those. I even said in one of my own specials, ‘one of the boxes I want to check as an A-lister is someday I want to go on a 51-50 psych hold’. And then I did! “I was in there thinking, ’you know what? Good for me, I am living my act. I am truly on the D-list.” It isn’t just Kathy’s own performance style that has shifted in the last decade, though, with the comedy world itself going through a number of changes in the years since her Trump controversy. These changes are ones that Kathy is more than happy to roll with, lambasting right-wing voices concerned about the supposed “woke mind virus”. “I can’t stand that,” she says. “ I don’t like the ‘woke mind virus’ term because, look, I’m about to turn 65, and I want to be ‘woke’. The far-right has co-opted the term ‘woke’, when who doesn’t want to be awake? I mean, just by definition, it’s a better way to be. “Having done stand-up for decades, I want to know the newer phrases I should be using. I don’t want somebody to leave actually offended. If it’s the president or some big celebrity, they can handle it, but I mean, I don’t want to use terms that are embarrassing or make people cringe because I’m an old lady now. I like learning all the new fun stuff. We all should be learning and growing. And, as a comic, I think it’s essential to keep evolving.” Kathy admits she’s even “shocked at my own comedian friends” who buy into the mindset that “comedy is over” because “you can’t be offensive anymore”. “If you can’t be funny without only being offensive or using words like, I don’t know, the R-word…” she begins. “I went to a comedy club recently, and there were several comics that used that term, and even I couldn’t believe my ears. I just don’t think that’s a word you need to use in a comedy club anymore. And we now know better, so we should do better. “You can still tell a funny story without using that particular word. It’s OK to take words out. I mean, look – I don’t even look at my old specials, because I would probably cringe at the stuff I used to say. But, you know, it was a different time. “And so, in the new special, I wanted to be really conscious of the changing times. I don’t want to stay stuck in the 90s or the 2000s or insist on going backwards. That’s everything I fight against, especially as a female. I want to go forwards, I can’t believe how freaking backwards we are, and now we’re going more backwards. So I want to go only forwards as a comic, as an American, and as a woman.” Unlike her past televised comedy specials, My Life On The PSTD-List is Kathy’s first to premiere on YouTube, a decision she took for a number of reasons. Initially, she tried to sell the special to networks and streaming platforms, but found they wanted her to trim it down so as to only include the “really heavy stuff”. “They kept being like, ‘that’s what John Mulaney does’,” she claims. “My whole career , no matter how much I accomplish, two Emmys, a Grammy, there’s still always a group of middle-aged white guys going, ‘can’t you be more like Matt Rife?’, ‘can’t you be more like John Mulaney?’. And I’m like, ‘I’m busy being Kathy Griffin’.” “I’m also an earner,” she points out. “I’ve earned a lot of money for a lot of networks and streamers, so show some goddamn respect!” After consulting with fans on social media, who “overwhelmingly” told her they’d rather see the full show, she reasoned she’d ultimately rather people see the special as she intended it. “They started calling it ‘the Kathy Griffin cut’, which is very funny, like I’m Martin Scorsese or something,” she remarks. “So, I said to my agents, ‘with all due respect, all you middle-aged white guys, I love all of you, you’re all brilliant, but sorry, I’m going to put it on YouTube for free’.” Kathy says: “The freedom of not having some development people tell me what’s funny and what isn’t – that’s the kind of freedom that I’m very grateful I have at this point. That’s what I fought for my whole fucking career! “All the older women that went before me, when I would ask them for advice, they would say, ’make enough money and save enough money so you don’t need anyone. You want a network deal or you want a streamer deal, but if you don’t need it then you can do it yourself’.” “Sure, I’m hawking my wares,” she admits. “I’m doing whatever press I can do. I’m not Dave Chappelle or Chris Rock and I never will be, I get it. But, the freedom is fantastic.” It’s definitely not lost on Kathy that she’s back promoting a new special, not to mention her weekly YouTube series and latest US tour (the latter of which is titled New Face, New Tour, inspired by her recent facelift procedure), after a period when, at one point, none of that felt like a possibility. “When I was on everybody’s shit list, I had friends who would say, ‘oh, it’s going to be so great when they all come back grovelling and apologising’,” she recalls. “First of all, no one has – not one single person. If you know Hollywood, they’re not big on apologies. [But] I don’t feel the ‘fuck you’ vibe. I thought I would! I thought I’d get back on the road and my attitude would be, ‘fuck everybody, I was right’. And instead, it’s more joyous.” Reflecting on the last seven years of her public life, Kathy says: “I’ll tell you what’s wonderful – for the first half of that, people would come up to me on the street and confront me. One guy pushed me, people would get in my face and Trumpers would yell at me and stuff. “And then something happened. Well, [Trump’s] own behaviour. But now, it’s incredible. Seriously, 95% of the people that come up to me are like, ‘good for you, you were ahead of your time’.” “I had cancer, right?” she continues. “So I go to a million doctors’ appointments, and I’m at the hospital all the time, and I’ll be on the elevator, and somebody’ll run to get the elevator and be like, ‘good for you with that picture’. “So, I’m not advising that other people take that photo – trust me, he’s too nuts – but it is incredibly gratifying that people find an odd kind of strength in that photo. Or, even seeing that I’m kind of upright. Like, I’m not saying I’m doing great, but I’m upright!” Being an example to other people going through hard times, Kathy says, is “the biggest” motivation for her to keep going, saying she’s so “flattered” when people tell her how her journey has inspired them to persevere through their own hardships. “I thought, ‘I’ve got to stay still standing’ even though I still have enemies out there and I still piss off the most powerful men in the business – if not the world,” she says. “That tends to be what I’ve always done… but now with maybe a little more scrutiny. “But at the same time, I feel a real responsibility to just let my D-list fanbase – small but mighty – see that I’m still standing.” On her current US tour, Kathy is heading to what she’s describing as “the real America”. “I’m going to Trump Country, I’m going to non-Trump Country. Wish me luck!” she jokes. “I’m looking for those blue dots in red cities, because here I come, and I’m not holding back one bit.” Suffice to say, Kathy has plenty to say about her former adversary, as well as the current political situation in the US, . “Here’s the thing, we’re fucked,” she says bluntly. “We’re absolutely fucked. I can’t even believe that liar is back in office, and ‘liar’ is being kind…” While Trump does come up in her New Face, New Tour set, she says these references will be sparing, not least because “it’s actually a struggle” for her to look at the current administration and “make stuff funny”. “It’s more, like, ‘OK, we are all in this shitshow together, and we have to figure it out’,” she explains. “I’ll talk about Trump and stuff to a point, but I won’t make the whole show about him, because it’s just too depressing.” “So, yes, I have my work cut out for me,” Kathy continues. “I can just quote him – and sometimes that’s funny enough, because you can’t believe that he’s serious.” “The people around him are crazy, and the lunatics are running the asylum,” she adds. “And take it from me, because I was actually in an asylum.” In the last year, several of Kathy’s peers in the entertainment industry have left the US completely to live overseas, in the wake of Trump’s second term in office. Ellen Degeneres and her wife Portia De Rossi are now residing in the UK, while Kathy’s friend and fellow comic Rosie O’Donnell (who has had her own very public dealings with Trump over the years) has moved to Ireland, where she lives with her youngest child. “We are all frogs in the pot right now,” Kathy says. “The pot isn’t quite to a boil yet – but that’s the scary part about living in America now, which is similar to Germany in the 1930s. When do you go, and how do you know when to go? What is the tipping point, and what is your plan?” For Kathy, she’s not planning on following Ellen or Rosie’s lead in leaving the US. “I love my home, I love my friends,” she points out. “I don’t know how I would do in another country. I get depression, and I get lonely, and I need my friends around me and stuff.” Helpfully, she and her brother hold dual Irish citizenship, because of their grandparents, “so if I am targeted by this administration again, in the way that I was last time, if I have to leave, I have a plan”. “But I don’t plan on leaving,” she reiterates. “For the most part, I’m going to stay and fight. And in my case, that just means going all over the real America, telling my little jokes, trying to make people laugh, talking about the issues, but mostly just trying to give people a break from their difficult day – and just have some laughs on me.” She enthuses: “I’m still doing what I love. If you’re lucky enough to find something you love, you’re probably going to have to fight to keep doing it, but it’s worth the fight. And I won’t go down. And I certainly won’t go down for somebody like Donald Trump…” Kathy Griffin: My Life On The PTSD-List is now streaming on YouTube. For more information about Kathy’s New Face, New Tour shows click here. Help and support: Mind, open Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm on 0300 123 3393.Samaritans offers a listening service which is open 24 hours a day, on 116 123 (UK and ROI - this number is FREE to call and will not appear on your phone bill).CALM (the Campaign Against Living Miserably) offer a helpline open 5pm-midnight, 365 days a year, on 0800 58 58 58, and a webchat service.The Mix is a free support service for people under 25. Call 0808 808 4994 or email help@themix.org.ukRethink Mental Illness offers practical help through its advice line which can be reached on 0808 801 0525 (Monday to Friday 10am-4pm). More info can be found on rethink.org.
