Kathy Griffin's Celebrity Run-Ins

by Kathy Griffin

  The other thing about Grobes, though, is that as long as I’ve known him, he’s gotten the hottest pussy of anyone in Hollywood. Besides Michael Bolton, of course. You don’t hear a lot about this because he’s not like John Mayer. He’s just always been with a gorgeous chick whenever I’ve seen him, and he’s always had a great sense of humor about his popularity. He can take a joke. He’s too rich and successful to be bothered by the likes of me.

  One night he brought a date to come see me, back in my comedy club days, and came backstage to say hi. He said, “This is my girlfriend, January.” As in Betty Draper—January Jones, hot blonde of note.

  I couldn’t resist. “How did YOU get HER? She’s out of your league, Grobes.”

  When Jimmy Kimmel hosted the Emmys in 2012, Kimmel invited me to his post-party at the Soho House, and Grobes was there, so I started teasing him again. “You’re out of control, you know,” I said, and I brought up his stage bit bringing audience members onstage to sing with him. “Jesus, Grobes, how bad has it gotten? You’re on tour, but the pickings are so slim you’re trying to screw some chick in the crowd who can’t even sing ‘The Prayer’?”

  He looked at me, and without skipping a beat, he joked, “Look, honey, this cock isn’t going to suck itself.”

  Ladies and gentlemen, Josh Groban.

  HAMM, JON

  Actor, Nemesis

  You’ll never convince me to like Jon Hamm.

  I’ll admit he was great on Mad Men and deserved the Emmy they finally gave him in its last season. But that’s it. I get that this makes me the loner. Pretty much in any group I’ve ever been in, when I start bitching about Hammy, people act as if I’ve just strangled Jesus. But I’ve known him since before Mad Men. You see, he’s bros with some comedy guys I know, and I have to say the vibe I’ve always gotten from him is cold and somewhat disrespectful … toward me. I’m suggesting he’s one of these hot guys who’s mildly funny but actually thinks he’s comedian-level funny. You know the type—there’s probably one in your office or family. He just reeks of that. It’s an entitled air. When Hammy wants to be funny, he’s, well, not. And again, I’m not saying he hasn’t been good in his comedy appearances on 30 Rock and so on, but in my experience, the harder he tries to be funny, the more he’s not funny … to me.

  Case in point: a dinner at the legendary talent agent Sue Mengers’s house, in which I was privileged to be invited. It was only eight people, and one of them was the great Jack Nicholson. So when Hammy showed up, too, inside I thought, Oh, great.

  He even said to me, “What are you doing here?”

  I said, “I earned my seat at the table. What are you doing here?”

  He was in hair and makeup, because he’d just come from the set of Mad Men, where he’d been directing the episode as well as acting in it. (And yes, I’ll even admit, he’s a little talented.) But he proceeded to get very drunk during the coffee table portion, and then when it was time for dinner, Sue had sat him next to me. But at least Jack Nicholson was there, and I could focus on hopefully getting to know one of the great actors of our time. Then Jack, who usually directs whatever he says to seemingly the world at large, focused on me when he went off on a tangent about Rupert Murdoch almost getting a pie in the face during a parliamentary hearing in England. I was asking him about why he was so interested, and he started doing an imitation of the right-wing media mogul, and I was in heaven. And Hammy picks that moment, when Jack is talking to me, to start whispering boozy yammering into my ear. First it was, “You know your Emmy isn’t a real Emmy.” I let that one go, but then he whispered, “You’re so o-o-o-o-ld.”

  I said out of the side of my mouth, “Not now.”

  But he kept going, saying things like, “Do you know how o-o-o-o-old you look?”

  Finally, I turned and barked, “You can’t keep up. You’re outclassed. Now zip it; Jack’s talking.”

  The impression I got from him was, I’m not going to let her have that moment, and I will never forgive him for stealing my moment with Jack from me. And look, I’ve been told I’m old and not funny by a lot of guys—a lot of hot guys, too—but not when I’m in an intimate conversation space with frickin’ Jack Nicholson, an opportunity I figured I’d never get again; that’s the real reason I can’t stand Hammy. The double whammy of cruel but not playful comments and the horrible timing. Again, he’s not a comedian, folks. Hopefully done with the drink, but probably still Don Draper-y. I’ll also admit that I get a perverse joy in making him a nemesis, because it simply hasn’t been done by anyone else. I’ve cornered the market on convincing the jury that there is at least reasonable doubt regarding Mr. Hamm’s character.

  HASSELBECK, ELISABETH

  My Best Friend

  It’s easy to forget that years before we had our “Bring it” exchange on The View in 2010, Hasselbeck was a Survivor runner-up who expressed to me many times in her early View days she loved it when I came on the show and that I could get away with things that she couldn’t say. How quickly they turn, especially when they don’t have an identity, and they learn that spouting odious Republican talking points becomes the fastest way to earning the drooling love of old, white Fox News viewers.

  I distinctly remember an early View appearance when I was trying to persuade Barbara Walters that she should have Gloria Steinem on, because I believed that nobody had taken up the mantle of feminism for the younger generation in the way that Gloria has, and Hasselbeck didn’t know who Steinem was! Fair enough. Wait … did I just say “fair enough”? I was distracted by one of my dogs who started chewing on a cushion. Okay, what I meant was, how the hell do you get a seat on the panel of The View with the great Barbara freaking Walters and keep your job after having just admitted that you don’t even know who Gloria Steinem is? So I described Steinem to Hasselbeck and said something like, “But for your generation, Elisabeth, I don’t really know who that person would be now. In my opinion, it would be great if you and your sisters [using a real word from the real movement] could find someone to take the baton.”

  Then she said, “Oh, someone like Mandy Moore?”

  I was so thrown by that, I had to clarify.

  “You mean, the singer who sings ‘Candy’ and the gal from A Walk to Remember, or do you mean there is some other Mandy Moore somewhere in Berkeley right now teaching pro bono classes to disenfranchised single moms while she lives in a tree while researching her next appearance before the Senate, trying to get equal rights for women?”

  She meant Mandy Moore the pop star.

  Really, over the course of my time on The View, Hasselbeck’s stupidity never ceased to amaze me. As she became the right-wing mouthpiece, I personally saw and heard her getting the Fox News / Republican party talking points for that day from one of the executive producers. Hasselbeck used to be friendly to me. Then she just became a mean girl. There are people who aren’t bright but are at least aware at what they’re good at and what they don’t know. I think I’m bright about some things and am always kicking myself over the things I don’t know. Elisabeth struck me as someone who, while she deserves credit for being ambitious, before my very eyes became someone who was a perfectly nice person that morphed into someone who was strident, yet unabashedly armed with Fox News–fed sound bites. I am sure she is a true believer in many ways as I am a true believer that she is a moron. I don’t care whether you’re on the left or on the right; you shouldn’t be on a daily television show that purports to offer news if you don’t know who Gloria Steinem is and think Mandy Moore is the modern equivalent. (Nothing against Mandy, incidentally, who’s probably a lovely person. Icon of can-do, activist feminism, though? Exactly.)

  Of course, our dustups have been popular with our respective fans—and the aforementioned “Bring it” moment makes for an audience-energizing part of my preshow clip reel—but I also know how much being on television adds to the spice of a “feud.” When I was at a very small charity event recently, I was hanging with my friends Ali Wentworth and Jessica S
einfeld, and we saw Hasselbeck walk in. They started teasing me, saying, “Uh-oh, here comes trouble for you.”

  I said, “No, no, it’s not like that. I may not get along with someone publicly, but ultimately we’re pros. People like her know that off camera, we can all be civil.”

  I went up to Hasselbeck to say hello. I stood there patiently waiting for her to finish up a conversation to the point where it just got awkward and she didn’t say a word to me—just walked away. I had to go back to Ali and Jessica and sheepishly say, “I was wrong.” What would Mandy Moore have done?

  HAWN, GOLDIE

  Actress, Giggler, Activist

  When my former beloved assistant Tiffany worked for me, she started an unofficial assistants’ union and through that became friends with Goldie Hawn’s assistant, Iris. When I heard about this connection, management (me) contacted labor (Tiffany) and demanded a sit-down with the legendary, Oscar-winning comic actress (Goldie Hawn). It was years in the making. In late 2014, the opportunity finally presented itself. Goldie wanted to know if I’d host her inaugural charity fund-raiser Love In For Kids, which, I know, sounds like a pedophile convention, but in reality was a benefit for her Hawn Foundation’s MindUP Program Transforming Children’s Lives For Greater Success. Yeah, that one’s a mouthful. I just call it HFMUPTCLFGS for short. Well, I sent word through Goldie’s assistant, Iris, that I wasn’t doing it until I got my face time with the legend.

  I knew Goldie was something of a recluse, but this was the deal—take it or leave it. Well, she took it, and we agreed to meet at a Melrose restaurant called FIG & OLIVE, which is not a place where you show up in workout pants, which is what Goldie wore. Her hair looked like she had just rolled out of bed with Kurt Russell. Hopefully she had. Based on her attire, I started teasing her.

  “Um, do you have your yoga mat with you?” I asked. “Where’s your ball gown?”

  She cackled and said, “Oh, I don’t do that stuff! You’re a riot! Siddown!” Ballsy, those legends. She started talking about the event, but I cut to the chase.

  “Look, honey, I don’t give a crap about the event. Do you know how many of these I’ve done for you people? What do I get?”

  She looked confused. “I thought this was it!” she said.

  I continued to tease her and kiss her ass at the same time. “I’ve always wanted to meet you because I think of you as a unicorn,” I said. To me, a unicorn in the Hollywood sense is a mythical being that one does not often see and is someone whom after seeing such unicorn makes you want to run to your phone and tell all your loved ones about the sighting.

  “I am a unicorn!” she immediately responded while simultaneously pointing to herself. It was her lack of hesitation and utter willingness to agree that she is a unicorn that made me fall in love with her.

  I still had to set her straight about one thing. “Unless you have $300,000, we are not done. Give me the lowdown on the sequel to The First Wives Club and who I’m going to play. I’ll call Bette; you call Diane.” She just laughed and laughed, and Iris initiated our Twitter pic, which I insisted be taken only after Goldie put on at least a measure of lip gloss.

  ICE-T

  Rapper, Cop, Refreshing Drink

  In the days when I was getting my sea legs as a stand-up and working at the Groundlings, I became a staple on the radio show Loveline when Riki Rachtman and Adam Carolla were hosts along with Dr. Drew Pinsky. One night, the topic arose of rapper Ice-T’s admitted past as a pimp, and I launched into a rant that amounted to “What’s so great about that?” and went so far as to accuse him of lying. I was saying things like, “That’s the type of thing you say when you want to have street cred. You think Ice-T was Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch? I don’t buy it.” He was already a wealthy music guy by this point, so I didn’t think twice about it. But he responded, and in a newspaper article! He called me out by name with a “how dare she” and “she doesn’t know me” tone, and doubling down on his claim that he was a badass pimp before he became a rapper. That was one of my early experiences in which I realized, Uh-oh, the person actually heard what I said.

  Cut to some fifteen years later, if not a little more, and I got cast on Law & Order: SVU in a guest star role. Ice-T’s a middle-aged man now, and in my mind, I’m foolishly thinking, I’d better be ready, because he’s been waiting for this day, to put me in my place since 1994. It’s probably all he thinks about.

  We were filming on the streets of New York, and during a break in filming, we ended up sitting at the same table at a restaurant the production had rented. He just started talking to me, and he was essentially acting like a kind uncle, asking about stand-up, if I was having a good time on SVU, whether I wrote all my material, and complimenting me on doing my own thing. He was as nice as can be. So of course I had to bring up what was going unspoken. What else could I do? Remember when Ice-T had that rap feud with LL Cool J? In my head, his watch list was 1) LL Cool J, 2) Kathy Griffin. It’s in my nature to break the perceived tension with “Remember when I pissed you off? Well, let me remind you if you don’t.” So I just said to Ice-T, “Come on, have you forgiven me yet? It’s been long enough. We need to make up now. Are we cool after that whole thing?”

  And he just looked at me and said, “What are you talking about?”

  So I filled him in, because he has, after all, filmed 600,000 episodes of SVU and probably can’t remember a time when he wasn’t doing the show.

  “Oh, that’s funny,” he replied. “You said that? Oh, man … and I responded? Oh, that’s too much. Girl, you are crazy!” He chuckled.

  I could tell this guy brought to the table the kind of demeanor that you can only get from decades in the music and television industry. Here we were, having a nice actor conversation, and I had to wind the clock back to a comment on a radio station when people were buying CDs and Clinton was president. Contrary to the Academy Award–winning song in the film Hustle & Flow, maybe sometimes it’s NOT hard out there for a pimp.

  ICE, VANILLA

  Home Improvement Star, Rapper, Madonna One-Nighter

  I pride myself on bringing my comedy to the real America, damn it, so naturally I booked a gig in Stuart, Florida. Don’t pretend you know where it is, because I didn’t. But they had a theater, and people there wanted to laugh, so I went. That’s how my business works, people.

  The theater was nice, although the backstage was small. The night I was performing, one of the theater employees said to me, “Vanilla Ice is here.” When you’re on the road as often as I am, you live for words like that.

  “What do you mean here?” I asked.

  “He’s here at your show. He lives nearby. Everyone around here knows him.”

  Vanilla Ice bought a ticket for Kathy Griffin? I wasted no time. “GET HIM!” Then I clarified for this startled guy: “Tell him to bring his wife back here, we’ll get a backstage photo, an exclusive!”

  I’m not sure why I was speaking in a rapid-fire style as if I were in an outtake from Newsies, but it was minutes to showtime, and I was on a deadline.

  Seconds later, Rob Van Winkle and his then wife appeared. He looks just like he did in the rap days. Besides his head, he looked like a casually dressed Florida-type dude. He said, “Hi,” and I said, “Hi, I assume your wife wanted a picture.”

  He said, “Yeah. She loves you.”

  So we did the picture, and I made my small overture. “So, you know, I would just love it if you could bring me out when I have to go on.”

  “Sure!” he said with an ease that can only come from surviving an alleged one-nighter with allegedly Madonna where they allegedly may have had sexual contact.

  “You don’t have to rap or anything. I’m just saying it would be fun for you to introduce me, because I’m really flattered that you came to see the show. All you have to say is ‘Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give a big Stuart welcome for the hilarious Kathy Griffin…’” I knew it would be wonderfully kitschy—even though he’d just started his new TV life as a home
improvement show host—and yet make the audience happy. A truly great road moment.

  But it was even better than I had hoped because he actually went out and into the mic said, “STOP, collaborate, and listen…” and then proceeded to sing half of “Ice Ice Baby”! He freestyled new lyrics that used my name and then said, “So give it up for … KATHY GRIFFIN!”

  Everyone went crazy. I went crazy. I kind of forgot I had a show to do in a moment. I felt like I was at HIS show, and I had to remind myself to put one foot in front of the other and actually do MY show because this moment was delicious. The vibe in the room was awesome. I thought it was so cool that he knew what everyone would want and just gave it to them. It’s Mr. T knowing not to lose the Mohawk and chains. God love him. To this day, it’s one of the greatest intros I’ve ever had. Maggie would have to rap “Anaconda” at Carnegie Hall to top it.

  IRONS, JEREMY

  “Actor!,” Borgia, French Lieutenant

  In 2010 while dining with a friend at the Wolseley, a fancy restaurant in London, I spotted Jeremy Irons at a pretty big table. It’s not exactly proper in the UK to walk up to celebrities and bug them, so I kept watch and waited. When he stepped outside for a cigarette break, I paid that frickin’ check mighty fast. I grabbed my friend Derek and bolted for the door. Thankfully, the only people out there were a puffing Jeremy Irons—dressed in a vintage but elegant suit, like he’d just stepped out of a Merchant-Ivory period film, and leaning against the building, menswear-ad-style—and the restaurant’s fancy greeter/guard, crammed into a red coat. A real British postcard, these two. As for approaching the Oscar-winning actor, I thought it would appear less threatening if Derek and I acted like a couple. (No, we didn’t make out. Or have a screaming argument. We just looked familiar with each other.) We also hit upon the idea that instead of making the fawning, aren’t-you-so-and-so approach, we should pretend we didn’t know who he was.