Well, he wouldn’t do it. “Grrr,” was about all I got out of him. All day on the set he was like, “Ugh, are you still gonna bug me about writing your stupid note? Why do I have to write a note? I don’t want to write a note. I don’t even know you.” I remember thinking, Oh for God’s sake, just write the fuckin’ note! What Jerry didn’t realize at this point was that we were in a big fight, and I was officially not speaking to him anymore. He did not notice this, because he did not notice that I existed, and because he obviously had better things to do than tend to me and my needs. He finally, begrudgingly, wrote me that note for the gays telling them to root for him. But I think this was the first time I’d pissed off an A-lister to his or her face. Normally, as you know, I prefer to talk about people behind their backs.
Naturally, this experience had to go into the act. Beloved American treasure Jerry Seinfeld was an asshole. I thought it was funny. I felt wronged, and felt I had to blurt this out. It didn’t occur to me to think, Okay, Kathy, when you do stand-up in Los Angeles, there are going to be industry people there. Don’t bash the number one sitcom star in the world. But once I got laughs from it, I told that story in my act for three months. I couldn’t tell it twice at Un-Cab or Hot Cup O’ Talk, obviously, so it went into heavy rotation at all the clubs, alternative coffeehouses, and alternative donut shop performance spaces I could book myself in.
Jerry Seinfeld with his comedy idol.
Then, around that time, I got my first HBO comedy special. It was a half hour, and I was one of eleven other people who got half hours. Maybe not as prestigious, but still pretty cool. Sure enough, HBO said to me, “Oh, that Seinfeld story is funny, you have to put it in.” That’s when I finally thought, What if he sees it?
Ever since the audition, I had become a little friendly with Seinfeld co-creator/executive producer Larry David, so I thought I’d feel him out. “How’s Jerry going to take this?” I asked him. “I’m thinking about putting in this story about him.”
Larry thought it was hysterical that I was giving Jerry shit. “I know Jerry,” he assured me. “Jerry will NEVER see this. Never in a million YEARS. You’re FINE, kid, you’re good!”
Whew.
Meanwhile, Suddenly Susan was a-brewin’. After eight years or so of obscurity in the Groundlings, and a year of doing stand-up, I was up for a bunch of sitcom auditions. Casting directors and studio and network people were packing into Hot Cup O’ Talk and Un-Cabaret, and I finally started to get a sense of inevitability. Granted, I was often the girl cast after somebody already hired didn’t work out. But things were rolling. “You know what?” I would tell my friends, “eventually, they have to fucking put me on a TV show. They’re going to run out of girls to play the secretary, and they’ll have to come to me.”
After paying my dues for more than ten years, I was this close to getting a regular sitcom gig. I really do believe I was the favorite for a part on Caroline in the City, that mid-’90s Lea Thompson sitcom where she played a New York cartoonist. But I blew it at the test for the NBC bigwigs. How? I lost my voice. I even got a huge laugh out of it when I turned to Jeff Zucker, the head of the network, and scratched out the words, “Sorry, I just got that chimp virus from the movie Outbreak.” But they were starting production in two days, and they all just looked at each other, like, “She’s not talking. How do we know she can do this role?” So they hired Amy Pietz, and she did that show for four years.
Actresses are pretty competitive when it comes to vying for those sidekick roles. Keep in mind, a studio or network may audition seventy-five girls for one part. So when Suddenly Susan, with Brooke Shields playing a San Francisco magazine columnist, was being put together in the spring of 1996, it just seemed weird that I wasn’t in contention for the part of Vicki, Susan’s wisecracking colleague. Sidekick girls were coming up to me at auditions and saying, “I didn’t get Suddenly Susan. Are you up for it?” I’d have to say, “I don’t know. They just haven’t seen me.”
They saw every goddamn girl in town. Megan Mullaly, Morwanna Banks, Jennifer Coolidge, Rachel True, Sarah Silverman, Jennifer Esposito, even Downtown Julie Brown. Casting director Tony Sepulveda said to me, “Nobody was sold on you to test for the role.” Eventually for the pilot they cast Maggie Wheeler, that Fran Drescher–voiced actress who played Matthew Perry’s ex-girlfriend Janice on Friends. The show got picked up, but as is often the case, the cast from the pilot changes, and for some reason it didn’t work out with Maggie. Eventually it came down to the wire for the Vicki part. As in, the table read for the first episode of the first season’s shooting was on a Monday, and the Friday before they finally agreed to let me audition. They still didn’t even want to see me. But apparently Brooke wanted to look at other girls after that first audition, for whatever reason. The head of Warner Bros., the studio producing the show, wasn’t sold, either. But somebody at NBC kept reminding them, “She’s done guest spots for us, she’s good.” I’m positive the decision to hire me was out of desperation, because time was of the essence. A sort of “Fine, we’ll take her” scenario.
But nothing beats that moment when you feel your life has changed. I knew it in the parking lot after the audition. The casting director rolled down the window of his car as he was driving out, and said, “Hello, VICKI.” And no, he wasn’t mistaking me for red-headed actress Vicki Lewis from Newsradio. He knew I was getting that part. When the news was official, I called my parents, hysterically crying.
I had a role on a series!
I was going to make $15,000 an episode!
I was going to turn this into even more work: voice-overs, bigger commercials, small parts in films!
I was going to get to know an icon of beauty and glamour whose movies I grew up with!
I was going to work closely with Judd Nelson, a star of The Breakfast Club, a movie I worshipped!
I was going to be a part of the hot-as-shit NBC comedy lineup, and get to see my old pals Phil Hartman and Andy Dick, now on Newsradio, at all the network events!
Oh SHIT, I was going to see Jerry Seinfeld!
It was only a matter of time. I heard later that Jerry had seen the HBO special. Perhaps Larry David had been fucking with me. One day, my agent called and said, “Jerry Seinfeld is sending you something.”
Now, my imagination is such that if you don’t spell out exactly what’s happening, I’ll just go to the worst possible scenario. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I was convinced that Jerry Seinfeld was sending me a box of his own poo. Or he was going to send someone over to my house to break my thumbs. Okay, Kathy, snap out of it.
I remember saying to my agent, “Can he get me fired from Suddenly Susan?” And my agent was like, “I don’t … think so. I don’t know. He’s pretty fucking powerful over there.” Great. The biggest moment in my life, and maybe it was going to be taken away from me because of my big mouth.
Then the package came, and it was a box of Snackwell cookies. I was still terrified. What did this mean? Is this a comedy kingpin’s version of a mafioso sending a fish wrapped in newspaper to someone targeted for execution? Kathy Griffin sleeps with the cookies?
There was a letter, too, and after reading it, I felt relieved. It was hysterically funny, as you can see. It was a little scary, but you could tell he thought the whole thing was funny. At the end, he wrote, “Enclosed, please find a box of Snackwells for you to enjoy with my compliments.” Note the hilarious fake signature at the bottom of the letter, obviously scribbled by his assistant.
Later, I even found out from a friend of mine—okay, okay, some guy I was banging on the Seinfeld crew—that during tapings of Seinfeld, Jerry showed that bit from my HBO special to the audience while they would set up for the next scene. And after I went on the Conan O’Brien show to talk about getting that letter, Jerry added that clip to what he showed at tapings, too. Jerry not only got the joke, but he was growing my audience!
Want to know what happens when you make fun of A-listers? Every once in a while they get it.
Once again, just like when I bombed for two years after I got laughs the first time I tried stand-up, I was fooled into thinking, Oh, celebrities are fine when you make fun of them! They all think it’s funny! In fact, they send you funny gifts! And write you awesome letters that you can frame!
To this day, Jerry Seinfeld leads the pack of A-listers who can take a fucking joke.
From left: Andrea Bendewald, Nestor Carbonell, Judd Nelson, some ex-jeans model, Barbara Barrie, a future Emmy winner, and David Strickland (Photo: Suddenly Susan © Warner Bros. Television. All Rights Reserved.)
My first impression of Brooke Shields was that I’d never seen someone so beautiful that her face looks like it has makeup on when it doesn’t. The color of her eyelids already looks like eye shadow, and the natural color of her lips looks like lipstick. My God, I thought, that’s a whole other level of gorgeous.
Gracious hostess that she is, Brooke wanted to take the cast of Suddenly Susan out to lunch before the first table read. She wanted us all to hang out, and that’s how I first met a lot of the other key cast members: Barbara Barrie, the Breaking Away actress who played Brooke’s mom; the handsome Nestor Carbonell, who played the Cuban-tongued hunk Luis; David Strickland, the cute, funny guy who was the fictitious magazine’s music critic; and Judd Nelson, the former Brat Packer who played the boss.
Brooke was very sweet, and I was impressed with her early on because she was very deferential to me when it came to the comedy. She would often turn to me that first season and say, “Ugh, help me make this funny. How would you do this line?” I’d think, Wow, that’s really cool of her. It was also smart. It made me understand, no matter how famous you are, don’t ever be afraid to turn to somebody and ask for help. Don’t ever feel above it.
Brooke Shields seems flummoxed by my bad acting. (Photo: Suddenly Susan © Warner Bros. Television. All Rights Reserved.)
Then she stopped doing it. Something happened, where the first time I got a really, really good review, and she got a bad one, that shit went out the window. Then there’d be tense moments when I would get laughs and she wouldn’t. I was always blown away by that beautiful-girl syndrome. To me, Brooke had everything. She was gorgeous, successful, gracious, America’s sweetheart, and yet there was this big part of her that resented that I got laughs. I just couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t trying to be a cover girl, for Chrissakes. I remember saying to her one time, “Isn’t it enough that you’re beautiful and perfect and wonderful and guys are in love with you and you’re starring on a show and the head of the network is kissing your butt and you’re rich and successful? I’d be happy to have one of those things. And on top of that, you want to get the laughs? Can’t I just have this one thing?” She laughed at that reasoning, and thankfully it eased the tension.
The reality is, when you’re the sidekick, you do the wisecracks. That’s it. There was no very special Vicki episode in my future. And I didn’t want that, anyway. But that always blew me away about pretty actresses and models. To this day, when I run into them, they’ll be a little bitchy toward me if I get a laugh on a set. Really, gals? It’s not enough that every statistic shows you can get a job easier than I can, that every guy wants you, and the world is easier for you in a multitude of ways?
I just want my dick jokes.
The truth is, I still feel like Brooke is my sister. There’s something about working every day with someone for four years where you really get to know them well, and vice versa. And what’s great about Brooke is that for as beautiful and perfect and iconic as she is, you could always break her down. I don’t mean make her sob. What I mean by that is, if we were in a room alone, and the celebrity world of phone calls and photo shoot requests wasn’t allowed to barge in for five minutes, she was just a regular person.
I was very cognizant of the weight of her celebrity, too. I saw many ups and downs of the limelight through her notoriety. She was my fame professor, really. Right off the bat, her marriage to Andre Agassi was like a spotlight times a hundred. It was my first prolonged exposure to a real celebrity power couple. The first week Suddenly Susan was set to air, we all came into work and Brooke said, “Guess what, everybody? Tonight we’re all going to fly to Las Vegas, watch the episode, and fly home tonight on Andre’s 747!” That 747 had a bed in it. That’s how big it was. So we went to Andre Agassi’s house, which I have to say was surprisingly lame for a guy with a $100 million Nike contract. It was a cookie-cutter McMansion, which just seemed odd. I expected something a little more Cribs. But it didn’t stop me from being inherently dazzled by where I was. I was in Andre Agassi’s house. I’d look outside. There was his tennis court. Holy shit.
Brooke Shields and me on vacation looking a little gay for each other.
That was the first time I’d been around real wealth. One time during a rehearsal, Brooke said something that always stuck with me. “You know, with wealthy people there’s a difference between money and real money. I have money. Andre has real money.” That told me that in the celebrity world, the ceilings are different than anywhere else. Brooke had lived in New York for years, ran with a society crowd, worked in Hollywood since she was a child, and Andre’s the one with real money? Maybe Andre is somewhere having that conversation about Warren Buffett. “You know Warren? I have money, but he’s got real money.” Again, holy shit. I had to start saving.
Brooke was a different person around Andre, though. She was a lot more fun and loose when she wasn’t around him, and in his presence she would come off very wifey. One time she told me he didn’t like cussing. “Don’t be surprised if he snaps at you for swearing too much,” she said.
“I’m a little old to have someone yelling at me for swearing,” I said.
“I’m just saying, he’s a Christian, and we go to church together, and he goes through phases where he gets really uncomfortable with swearing.”
“Well, I go through phases where I might punch someone in the face who gives me shit about swearing,” I joked.
I could tease Brooke like that, but I could never say that in front of Andre, because then she wouldn’t laugh. It was like she had to dumb herself down for him. I want to give him his due about his tennis talent, but as far as personality goes, he was pretty humorless and kind of a pill. This was a period when he was taking a lot of heat for losing matches, and people were blaming Brooke, and that was rough on her. It’s that world where as gorgeous and as famous as Brooke is, there was nothing like that Agassi cred. He was the guy who when he came to the set, everyone would freeze. Suddenly the heads of the network and studio were there, guys who rarely spoke to Brooke were suddenly stumbling over themselves and losing their shit, and bromances were sprouting all over the place. Men were practically crying. My straight guy friends who could barely remember the name of my TV show were asking me about him. I remember thinking, Calm the fuck DOWN. He plays TENNIS. Brooke over here has worked with everybody! She’s made movies! Survived an alcoholic mother! She models and acts! He does one fuckin’ thing!
Not only that, I remember a conversation Andre and I had when he said he didn’t enjoy tennis anymore. Instead, he was golfing obsessively. “If it was up to me, I would just golf all the time,” he said. I thought, Well, you’re not that good at it, apparently. There’s a thing called a racquet you might want to pick up. You seem to be good with it. It’s a theme in my life. Go where you’re welcome and wanted. I wasn’t making it at the Improv, so I went toward Un-Cabaret. For a guy in his midtwenties, he seemed a little young to be bored with it all. And here was Brooke who mastered reinventing herself. When a movie of hers bombed she went on a date with the Sultan of Brunei, which resulted in tons of publicity. Later on when she was out of the spotlight, she did a naughty guest role on Friends. And that led to Suddenly Susan. She was expert at getting back in there some way, any way.
Much of this tenacity and knack for reinvention comes from Brooke’s mom. Brooke and Teri Shields have a pretty well-entrenched public relationship. Teri is known as t
he drunken, overbearing stage mom, and Brooke is known as the beautiful, young, talented model/actress who was carted all over the world when she was twelve, who made something of her life. Brooke was certainly all those things, but her mom is also incredibly quick, witty, and smart. I got along great with Teri, because she’s a hilarious, sarcastic drunk. Multiply her and you get my whole family. Those are the people I love. So I hit it off with Teri the minute I met her. Obviously I totally empathize with Brooke. It would be very difficult to have Teri as a mom. I understand that. Maggie Griffin certainly wasn’t shoving me into a bikini when I was a preteen and flying me around the globe to be in movies. But I get Teri. She’s clever, and has a true rapier wit.
One time Brooke started teasing me about how I get along with her mom better than she does. She pulled me aside and said, “I really like that you like my mom so much.”
“We’re not ganging up against you,” I said, defensively.
“No, no,” she said. “Sometimes when I get mad at my mom, I have to be reminded of the good things about her. I love that you get her and see the good stuff.”
“Well,” I explained, “she’s not my mom. It’s a completely different dynamic. Your mom is quick, funny, and biting, and those are my peeps.”
I appreciated what Brooke had said, though. Especially because I couldn’t help but giggle when Teri would say vicious things, like turning to Brooke periodically and barking, “It’s not all about YOU!” Brooke would be so hurt, and I’d be like, “I thought everybody’s relatives said that!”
My sister Brooke and I would fight, of course. It’s testimony to how stupid our fights were that I can’t remember what most of them were about. I borrowed her conditioner and didn’t give it back, or something ridiculous like that. One time she stormed into her dressing room, and I heard her say, “I’m going to get her so fuckin’ fired.” I didn’t think anything of it until I went up to David and Nestor and said, “Who was Brooke talking about?” And they said, “Um … you.”
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