Since we last spoke with comedian Kathy Griffin in 2014, she has been through the wringer: lung cancer, getting canceled, a divorce, addiction. But in typical fashion, Griffin has found a way to laugh about it all.
Griffin is on her first standup tour in six years, called My Life On The PTSD list, and she has a new YouTube series called Talk Your Head Off.
Griffin will be performing at the Paramount in Peekskill on March 28 and at The Egg in Albany March 29.
I can't believe we made it, you and I, here we are still going strong, and yes, I've been through some crap, but I want you to know that I am so grateful for this tour, and Albany, every show is special, but Albany is actually the last night of the whole tour. And this was a tour that started out — first of all, it wasn't even supposed to be, because the current administration is not, how shall I say, a fan of mine, right? But it started out as 40 cities, which I couldn't believe. That was miraculous in itself. You know, after six and a half years of being shunned and blacklisted, etc, etc, and then it ballooned into 75 cities. And so I had a show last weekend in Seattle, and I taped it, and you're going to love this. I paid for the whole thing myself because nobody else would. So I'm going to edit it down to an hour try to sell it, and I broke my own record for having done more stand up specials than any comedian, male or female, living or dead. I'm actually in the Guinness Book of World Records.
What number are you up to now? I mean, the last I knew it was dozens.
Yeah, 22. Take that, Matt Rife, you and your crowdwork.
So you want to get that thing on a streamer eventually?
I'd love to get it on a streamer. I mean, I've had specials on everything from Comedy Central back in the day to MAX, when it was still called HBO to then, of course, all the years at Bravo, which is now Peacock. Peacock is re-showing all the six seasons of ‘My Life on the D-list,’ hence naming the tour ‘My Life On The PTSD List,’ and so I'm hoping people rediscover ‘D-list.’ And if nothing else, you got to rediscover how hilarious my parents are.
I miss your mom.
I mean, she was a legend, and I've only watched one episode of that show since it aired, and I watched it, and I just was, like, my mom and dad were such legends, like, they were so real. I don't even know if you could do a show that real right now. Like, we never told them what to say. We'd give them a topic. Like, OK, in this scene, you guys will be talking about Kathy's trip to perform for the troops in Iraq, and that's it. We'd give them their boxed wine or maybe two-buck Chuck if they were feeling fancy, and then they would get hammered and just be themselves. And it was hilarious every time.
You probably don't remember this, but in our last interview, you put your mom on the phone in the middle of it.
Well, I had to keep her working. That wine doesn't buy itself, and so are you kidding? I had my mom write a book called ‘Tip It,’ which was about her life, because she lived to be freaking 99, may God not curse me with that. Anyway, the genes in my family are insane. My mom lived to 99, my dad lived to 90. They drank every day like fish. They ate Swanson's TV dinners and McDonald's. I don't know how they did it, but I'm hoping I don't quite have that gene.
I don't drink at all, by the way, but I do talk about addiction, because after the Trump decapitated head photo, which I'm now actually proud of, there's been a whole emotional arc just for me internally, to go from being so terrified because of a situation that now when I look back at how seismic the reaction was, can I just say it really was BS. It was just nothing deeper than a big bag of BS. And the way people overreacted to that picture of me holding a Halloween mask with ketchup on it and saying I was the face of ISIS and putting me on the no fly list, and then the Interpol list, which is the international version of the no fly list, and then the Five Eyes list, which is the terror watch list, which says on my passport she may be a member of ISIS, because, you know, ISIS is looking for a lot of 57-year-old redheads. That's how old I was at the time.
And I talk about this in the show, because I do feel like everyone's been touched by addiction in some way, shape or form. And I laugh at this. I did become a junkie at 57. You're welcome: anything for the act. And that was a perilous time, and I tried to take my life. I was even on one of those three-day, 5150 psych holds in a freaking psychic psychiatric ward. I can even make that funny. Gotta come see me now to see that. And I talk about the real stuff, because we're going through a period that is historically unique, and I don't feel like we're talking about it enough, but I just talk about my struggles. I actually don't talk about Trump in this show very much. I talk about the Trump effect on the world, because I think we're all feeling it, at least those of us on the left, but I think it's OK.
There's something that has happened over the years and with my audiences and people that buy a ticket, it's ‘an evening with.’ I don't have an opening act. I do two hours if I'm a good girl. I do 2:15 if I'm naughty. And I write my own stuff. Not that I want to get into Ellen…Anyway, I write all my own stuff. I can't resist. I'm still a bitch, and I talk to the audience like they're my buddies, because I feel like, after all these years, we've been through this stuff together, and if you watched ‘My Life on the D-list’ back in the day, you really did know my parents and all that stuff was real. So the struggles are real, but I still have a lot of the good, juicy celebrity razzle dazzle. I've got great stories about going on vacation with the singer Sia, where, you know, ‘Chandelier,’ right? Everything went wrong on this vacation. I mean, everything, really. And of course, I planned it, so that's funny. I talk about going to Paris Hilton's Christmas party. She and I are friends now. That's funny, and so it's a mix of, like, stuff that you might not think is necessarily appropriate for comedy, but I make it personal. I include the audience. I check in with the audience, but I don't do crowd work. I don't want you to think I'm gonna go up and down the aisles, going ‘Where you from?’ You can just buy your ticket and relax. I make fun of myself first, others later. But so far these audiences, there's something about this tour, and it's ballooned to a year and a half tour, which I just can't believe. I got to bring this show to Carnegie Hall. I got to bring this show to Boston Symphony Hall. And these audiences, it's like they're giving me a hug. Like, I know that sounds corny and it's not funny, but like, there's something special going on with these audiences.
You have to find it reassuring with everything that you have gone through, and you haven't been on the road so much, to see that they're still there for you.
That we can still laugh at stuff, because I really am a living example of when you are at your absolute lowest. And I mean, I had the world turn on me, honey. I had left, right and center, not just the right wing.
We didn't talk about your health, but you had lung cancer. Is it harder to perform?
Honey, I have half a lung. I have half lung on my left side! You are looking at a one and a half lunged wonder. And I don’t appreciate how you're flaunting your two lungs in my face.
I'm breathing deep!
You're breathing deeply, which is rude. And they took out half my lung, and then leave it to me to, of course, be injured during the lung cancer surgery. So then, for three years, I had a paralyzed left vocal cord and a voice like Minnie Mouse. So I was a comedian that lost her voice metaphorically because of all things the Department of Justice did, then lost my voice literally because of a botched surgery. And luckily I found through Sia an amazing female surgeon, a woman of color, who was like, wait a minute, there's this new thing. You can actually get a vocal cord implant. So overnight, I got my life back and in my left vocal cord, I actually have an implant, so I call it my boob job, but it's in my neck.
Can you feel it?
No, but it's amazing to me that I went to sleep one day with a perfectly normal voice, woke up without a voice, and then this time, went to bed with no voice and woke up with an actual voice. So yeah, I'm afraid to go to sleep these days because I don't know what I'm going to wake up to.
I know that the dogs factored into your experience of the wildfires not long ago. What happened?
You know, when you have to evacuate with four dogs, it's a little trickier. And here in California, we have a very good governor, and we have a great mayor of Los Angeles, and we have a system here called Ready Set Go, so we're all very well trained on how to prepare to evacuate. So I've had to evacuate twice in the last six months. My house was lucky enough to be spared both times. Knock on wood. But I really do love living in Malibu. And I know that sounds corny, because I'm a Chicago kid, so it sounds so weird to even say I live in Malibu. But here's the best part, I have a whole new set of neighbors that I can put in my act.
Can I end on some celeb dish with you? You had this Tiktok the other day about dating Jack Black back in the 90s.
He was unknown. I think he had done one, one movie called ‘Waterworld,’ which is an obscure movie that actually was bit ahead of its time, because it was about us losing water, which we now are, starring Kevin Costner. And I think then he was still doing theater and stuff, and he was in a group with his partner, Kyle Gass, called Tenacious D. And I just love Jack. He's so talented, he's so funny, he's such a good singer. And I just thought it would be fun on my YouTube show to go through my old photographs, and I have to say the word like that for young people, but these are pictures that you haven't seen because I was decluttering like a room in my house, because I'm kind of a neatnik and I found this giant collection of just photos I have. Some of them my parents even took of celebrities before I was even trying to be an actress, because I'm just from a family that's very starstruck, and we're from Forest Park, Illinois, and there were no stars there when we were growing up. And we all loved Hollywood movies and Hollywood TV, and we love comedy in our family and music. And so even when I had just moved to California, when I was 17 or 18, my mom and dad and I would go and stand outside like an award show and try to get a picture. Now in those days, you didn't usually take the picture with the person, so I just happen to have a picture of myself with Jack because we were just at some party together, and somebody took our picture and then gave it to me. But Jack looks very different now, which I thought would be sort of the funny part of the picture. But I'm just so happy for him for all of his success, because he is so talented, and he's always been wildly talented.
Are you still starstruck by celebrities? I mean, now you're one of them.
Well, look, I'm on the D list, honey.
The PTSD list.
The PTSD list is real, and I'm on it, but, like, I'm supposed to do this interview for that magazine, ‘Interview’ magazine, where celebrities interview other celebrities. And here's the kicker, they can't get anybody to want to interview me. They call me every day with a new celebrity that's passed and I'm like, oh, did you think this was going to be easy? You thought, like, any celebrity was going to want to talk to me? Oh, no, no. I'm still considered toxic, dangerous, obviously, an enemy of the state, an enemy of Donald Trump. The word that they my agents use is that people in Hollywood are still ‘squeamish’ about me, and I'm thinking of naming my next tour ‘Kathy Griffin: Still Squeamish,’ but I'm not sure. We'll see if I get any actual like paying work. But we'll see who ends up interviewing me. What lucky, lucky celebrity gets to interview me for ‘Interview’ magazine.
