“Why?” I said.
“Because it’s getting out that her marriage is falling apart, and Brooke thinks you’re talking about it all over town.”
Now, Brooke had come to my stand-up shows, and she was always very supportive of me, even as I told stories about Suddenly Susan. But this was ridiculous. She thought I was talking to People magazine about this guy who was hanging around the set all the time. His name was Chris Henchy, a comedy guy I’d known from those Dave Rath parties years ago. He was coming to the set twice a week, a set with fifty people around at any given time. How am I the only person who could have given out this info?
Brooke confronted me about it, and I said, “I didn’t leak anything about your marriage, but your boyfriend is coming by constantly. And besides, I don’t know people at People.”
So we had a big blowup, and we tried not to talk to each other. Which is funny when you’re acting in the same scenes, doing run-throughs, together, and bumping into each other frequently. Every time one of us would try to be alone, we’d run into the other. If Brooke wanted five minutes to go get coffee somewhere off set, that’s when I’d be walking out some other door to go to my car. Eventually, I went to this little diner to eat by myself, and sure enough, she shows up with her dog in tow. There was nobody but me at a table, and Brooke and her dog at the counter. I finally just turned to her and said, “I would like your dog to stop following me.”
She laughed! And that’s how we would make up. We’d have fights about nothing, then make up over nothing. I actually get a tickle out of remembering our fights, because they were the times when I got to see a real side of Brooke that wasn’t a perfect ice princess model. We had a lot of good girl talk over those years, many heart-to-hearts, and I really miss that about her. I’m sure that she was relieved that I turned out to be more than a perfect ice princess model as well.
The ratings for Suddenly Susan were insane the first year, something like twenty million viewers a week. You don’t get those kinds of ratings anymore, unless you’re American Idol. We were part of a Thursday night lineup that included Friends and Seinfeld, so to some extent we were going to be golden for a while. But nobody was accusing us of being as good as those shows, that’s for sure. I was perfectly happy, of course, doing my thing as a sitcom sidekick—my dream gig—but I had to take shit from people, too. Like from my former nemesis Jerry Seinfeld.
I went back to do another guest spot on Seinfeld as the same character I played in my first appearance—Sally Weaver—only this time the story line was taken from my experience with the real Seinfeld: In the episode, Sally becomes a stand-up comedian who makes her living ragging on Jerry. Oh yeah, inspiring an episode of Seinfeld is big-time. I remember walking on to that diner set having worked on Suddenly Susan all day, and there was Jerry all by himself sitting in one of the booths. I heard from across that stage, “Well, well, well! Look at Miss Famous!” I just thought, All right, here we go. I figured I could either be a submissive dog who would roll over, or I can act like a peer. So I just sat down in the booth and said, “You really were an asshole that day.”
He laughed really hard. Whew.
It was actually an amazing conversation, because Jerry had just declared to the world that he was going to end the show and go back to stand-up. He’d been on the cover of Time magazine with his announcement. I really felt honored getting to spend time with him that week, this comedy icon who was closing up shop on America’s favorite show. But boy, he would just be brutal to me about Suddenly Susan.
“So,” he’d say in that uniquely Seinfeldian cadence of his, “are you having fun over there at Suddenly Susan?”
“Yes, Jerry,” I’d reply, knowing full well where this was going.
“Is that a … is that a fun show to be on?”
“Not as funny as your show, of course, Jerry, but it’s a fun show, yes. Brooke Shields is very nice.”
“I’m just curious. I mean, you were just over there, and now you’re here. What do you think makes that show different from this show?”
“Jerry…”
“Is it the scripts? Would you say it’s the scripts? It’s probably the scripts, right? Do you think it’s the scripts?”
Then I would have to say “Yes, Jerry, the scripts are obviously better here. And you’re fantastic and wildly funny, and everything is better here.”
Larry David, meanwhile, was making these hilarious phone calls to me at the Suddenly Susan set, roping me into similar conversations, too.
“Um, Griffin,” he’d say over the phone. “What, uh … what’s going on over there this week on Suddenly Susan? ”
I’d be like, “Larry, I don’t want to do this now. It’s taping day. I’m busy.”
“No, no, I’m just calling …”
“You’re going to make fun of me for being on this show.”
“NO! NO! No, I’m not. I’m not. Just tell me what’s going on! What’s the uh … what’s the ‘A’ story this week?” he’d say, referring to the primary story line of the episode.
“I’m not going to tell you.”
“Aw, come on! Tell me! Tell me what they’re writing over there.”
I’d pause, then give in. “Well, this week we’re going camping and I have an evil twin.”
Then he’d let me have it: “Oh GOD, you’ve gotta get off that show! That’s TERRIBLE! You’re KIDDING me?!?! You CAN’T be doing a camping episode! You HAVE TO GET OFF THAT SHOW! Just leave! Get in your car! Get in your car and leave!”
But why would I leave? I really did have a dream job, and I was making good money. The first year of Suddenly Susan I made the same mistakes my friends did who went from earning $20,000 a year to $250,000. They’d get very loosey-goosey with money, buying things they couldn’t afford, or just giving it away. So if somebody had a sob story, I wrote them a check. For tens of thousands of dollars. Insane amounts of money. I had a learning curve that first year, and then mom’s voice of frugality rang out in my head.
The second year of Suddenly Susan, I decided that after years of renting and living in tiny spaces, I should own my own home. A big one. I always assumed I’d be doing something like this with a husband, but I was on a series, I was single, I hadn’t met anybody, and I wanted to do something for myself. So I picked out a 3,300-square-foot house in the Hollywood hills, four bedrooms and three baths, big enough for me to have an office and a gym. (It’s not the house you see on The D-List, but it was still pretty major.) The whole cast came over the day I closed escrow, and they all made fun of me. “Why the hell did you buy this big house?” they all wanted to know.
“Because I have the money now,” I said. “If Suddenly Susan goes away, if I break both my legs, if I can’t continue to make a living, I could live in this house forever. I’m not buying this for now. I’m buying it for when I’m eighty. This is a big box I can die in.”
Looking back now, the size of the house for one person was a little ridiculous. Plus, I instantly embarked on a remodel, not knowing what the fuck I was doing. But I loved it, from the yearly formal Christmas parties I threw, to having celebrities as canyon neighbors. One night I was on the balcony talking on the phone, and across the ravine I could hear someone shouting, “I hear you, Kathy Griffin! Shut up!” It was none other than my goth-rocking neighbor Marilyn Manson.
That house marked me in the eyes of a lot of my alternative comedy peers as a sellout, especially among the guys who simply didn’t have the same priorities as me, like David Cross. Then two years later David’s star was on the rise because of the HBO series Mr. Show with Bob and David, and he says to me, “Who’s your Realtor?”
“Really, David?” I said. “You’re going to give in to The Man like that?”
Thanks to this sitcom I was on I was making good money, felt a sense of job security, and made some wonderful new friends. But another great thing about Suddenly Susan was the revolving door of guest stars I had the opportunity to work with and observe. Some, of course, weren’t big wh
en they were on and I don’t remember them now. Dane Cook had a line once. Ali Larter from Heroes saw me at a party recently and a friend had to remind me she was on the show. Ali said, “I was the water girl.”
“Let me guess,” I responded. “You came in with the Sparkletts bottle, you were sexy, and Judd Nelson hit on you.”
“Yeah!” she said.
The stunt casting, though—casting big names for a quick-and-easy ratings bump—yielded some choice experiences. It’s how I got to know my friend Joan Rivers. She played my mom, and that was heaven. I had met her twice before, because her daughter, Melissa, was my student when I was a teacher at the Groundlings. But now we were working together, and we hit it off from the first day. She was complimentary toward me, and always had me laughing. She would improvise all the time, but the writers kept rejecting her lines. Their reasoning always had to do with things like camera placement and editing continuity, but I remember thinking, That’s a bad call. If Joan Rivers is making up jokes, why don’t you just use them?
Tommy Smothers was on once, too, but I admit I didn’t know as much about him as I do now. He and his brother Dick were famous fighters against censorship when they had their groundbreaking variety show in the late ’60s, and had I been aware of all that back then I would have tried to spend more time with him. He was very nice, though, and the last time I played in his neck of the woods in northern California, he sent me flowers and a gift.
Another legendary comedian we had on the show was Rodney Dangerfield. He liked me, too, but he was really loud and obnoxious. He would always yell, “You’re a funny BITCH!” And I’d think, You couldn’t stop at “funny”? But he was old school. Also, he’d sit in his dressing room in his bathrobe with his balls hanging out. He was flashing his crotch long before Paris and Britney. It wasn’t on purpose or anything, but he’d have his boxers on and his man parts would just seep out. I’d walk by his dressing room and run into David and Nestor, who’d notice the look of shock and awe on my face, and say, “Aww, did you see Rodney’s balls again?”
Sometimes what a guest star exposed was more personally surprising than anatomically disturbing. Hulk Hogan was on for at least two episodes. This was long before his reality show, so nobody knew what he’d be like. He showed up with an acting coach, which we all thought was weird. But at the table read, he seemed to have a lot of trouble reading. Maybe he’s dyslexic, but Hulk would memorize his lines as quickly as possible and run through them with this guy. It reminded me of when I did this short-lived sketch show Saturday Night Special the year before Suddenly Susan, and Tupac Shakur was a guest, and he read in rehearsal like a first-grader. I kept thinking, How could Tupac Shakur have made all that money, and he still can’t read?
Then there was Leif Garrett—and by the way it’s pronounced “Lay-f” not “Leaf,” and he will correct you—who showed up on the heels of his talked-about VH-1 Behind the Music episode in which we saw the extent of his drug abuse and how he’s gotten his life back together. The story was about how Susan finds her wish list from high school and decides to relive it, and one of the wishes was to go on a date with Leif. Well, he was completely nasty to me, but more important, he really seemed under the influence every minute he was there. I’ll never forget he had a ton of makeup on, which was a red flag, too. What are you covering up? Well, he told me that when he was jacked up on black tar heroin, he would scratch his face to the bone. He mimed it for me with his two forefingers, scratching either side of his face really fast like a chipmunk. I’ll never forget him saying “to the bone.” By the end of the week, he’d been such a prick that I used to call him “To the Bone” Garrett to his face. From what I understand, he went on to relapse several times after that.
All in all, Suddenly Susan was a very interesting work environment. For a show that was so sugary sweet and middle-of-the-road in quality, it actually had a backstage life that was very intense and biting. What was comical to me was how drama-filled it often was behind the scenes, all while we were putting out this squeaky-clean show. Brooke went through a divorce, and would have to occasionally deal with her drink-addicted mom. Judd was struggling with his own demons and left the show before the end of its run. And worst of all, we lost David Strickland when he took his own life in 1999, during our third season. It doesn’t get more intense than that.
The wonderful David Strickland and I doing a scene together. I miss him. (Photo: Suddenly Susan © Warner Bros. Television. All Rights Reserved.)
I loved David dearly, from day one. He was funny on the show, but he was even funnier off camera, and easily one of the funniest people I’ve ever known. At first, I was unaware of the extent of his problems, and then one day he showed up with short sleeves and he had severe scars on his arm from trying to commit suicide. They weren’t little slices, either. They were cuts that went lengthwise. It made me realize how often he wore long sleeves, something I hadn’t picked up on previously.
We weren’t close friends only at work; we also hung out off set. The fact that David was an addict rarely sank in with me because he was the unusual kind who even if he went missing on weekends—usually accompanied by a 2 a.m. phone call from Nestor saying, “David called me from a hotel in Hollywood, he’s with somebody he doesn’t know, and he’s on crack”—still showed up for work on Monday morning. That’s why I never thought his drug abuse would lead to any major consequences. He seemed to have a survival mechanism. I just thought he was one of those guys who goes on benders but has a part of him so driven and serious about his career that he’s got to figure out a way to get his ass to that table read at 8 a.m. on Monday, which he always did.
Looking back, I have a lot of guilt about one incident that showed how much I truly didn’t understand how bad his addiction was. It was a Friday night, I was bored, and I called him and said, “Do you want to go to Vegas tonight?” We were both single, so we got cash out of the ATM—“hundies” in our running-joke terminology—looked up the latest flight from LA, and got to the airport and ran down the terminal, David making me laugh as he yelled out, “Wait! Wait for us! We have hundies!”
When we got to Vegas, we had a plan. It was going to be an eight-hour trip, in total. We’d land, I’d go play my beloved slots, he’d go play blackjack, and we’d meet up in a couple of hours to take the earliest Saturday morning flight home. But since I’m not a drinking/drugging person, it didn’t occur to me that that might be the last I saw of him for the entire weekend.
So as discussed, I’m waiting for him at Bally’s at the appointed time, and he’s not there. I’m calling and calling and calling, and now I have to go to the airport and fly back home by myself at six in the morning. I was pissed. I called his mom, and called Nestor, “We lost him again. I don’t know where he is.” Well, sure enough, he fucking got his ass to work Monday morning. I was yelling at him, telling him not to ever do that to me again. He was repentant. Then he’d be fine for a while, go to AA, have a sponsor, and I’d be optimistic all over again. Surely, I tried to convince myself about David, “He can get it together at twenty-eight. He’s got his whole life ahead of him.”
One day, though, about a month before he took his life, he pulled me aside really close during rehearsal and said, “I don’t think I can ever quit drugs and alcohol.” He said it so matter-of-factly. I said, “Oh David, yes you can. Keep going to your meetings!” But in truth, he and I never talked about his problem very seriously. If I got mad at him about one of his benders, I might not talk to him for a while, but looking back I wish I’d taken it more seriously. Because he could function at work, the fact that he seemed so good with finances, that he was dating Tiffani Amber-Thiessen from Beverly Hills 90210 and madly in love with her, and that he had a big movie with Ben Affleck and Sandra Bullock coming out, it always seemed to me that the sensible side of him would win out.
It was a Monday when I learned what had happened. Steve Peterman, the creator of Suddenly Susan, called me in to Brooke’s dressing room, where she was crying. Ev
en then I thought, Maybe David’s in the hospital again, because he had spent time in a psych ward once. That’s when they told me he had taken his life. I don’t remember physically what happened next. I couldn’t tell you if I was sitting on a couch or what, but I remember instantly wanting to know everything about how it happened. I thought if I knew how he did it, it would give me insight into his state of mind. They told me he’d hung himself. That hit me like a ton of bricks. It was such a message, such a visual picture, the suicide method that has the most despair. It broke my heart more than if he’d chosen another more passive way. As if he were saying, “I’m so sad, I’m so despondent that I’m going to pick the most premeditative method possible so you know how much I really wanted to do it.”
Since then I’ve talked to a lot of people who have known relatives or loved ones who’ve committed suicide, and they always talk about getting angry at the person. I’ve never been able to get angry with David. I understand those feelings, because it leaves people without parents, without children. But more than anything I’m just incredibly sad about it all. I saw him try. I saw him go to AA meetings. I saw him with his sponsors. I don’t think he was cavalier about it. He showed up for work, knew his lines, was funny and smart. I can only think about how tragic it is that he was so sad that he felt like this was his only option. I’ll always want to know more about that night, and to this day I have friends who think it’s despicable that I even talk to Andy Dick, who was with David in Vegas his last night partying together before David went to a motel and took his life. But I’ll never stop asking Andy about that night. Maybe I’ll get one more piece of information about what happened. David’s mother once said to me, “Even if he had left a note, it wouldn’t have answered anything.” It’s true, of course. What could he put in a note that would justify it?
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