Kathy Griffin clearly still has “no f****s left to give.”
In a recent interview on The New York Times podcast Sway, the comic goes into detail for host Kara Swisher about the traumatic ordeal she experienced after a suicide attempt — while also touching on her views about cancel culture, particularly how it’s impacting comedians like Joe Rogan and Dave Chappelle.
“I tried to kill myself, and ended up in the psych ward,” Griffin said bluntly.
The comedian’s downward spiral began after her infamous 2017 photo in which she held the decapitated head (a Halloween mask and ketchup) of then-President Donald Trump.
While the stunt was intended to be a joke, it ultimately sent her on a life-altering journey that included being placed on a “no fly” list, getting harassed and threatened by Trump supporters, being fired from her CNN New Year’s Eve gig and much more. She later chronicled a bit of her experience in the documentary Kathy Griffin: A Hell of a Story.
“I didn’t know what to do with myself,” she said of that time, explaining that it exacerbated her addiction to pills. “I was just such a crazy workaholic, and all of a sudden, I had this time on my hands, and then I was depressed, and things just weren’t looking up. And then, you fall into the, like, life will be better for my husband without me around.”
“I did a real detox,” she said of her recovery. “Like, I didn’t go to the fancy place, because of COVID, but it was an important process, and I love my meetings that I go to and all that stuff. I’m like one of those corny, happy members.”
The comedian pointed out, as she has routinely, that her First Amendment rights were infringed upon by the federal government following the Trump photo. She also couldn’t help but touch on the recent controversies surrounding Joe Rogan and Dave Chappelle.
Chappelle recently stepped in hot water during his special, The Closer, which contained jokes that many people in the LGBTQ community viewed as transphobic. The criticism led Netflix employees and allies to stage a walkout with a list of demands on how the streaming service can do better for trans people.
“I love Dave, and I think he’s a genius,” Griffin, who’s toured with Chappelle in the past, said. “I just think that he’s also transphobic.”
She continued, “I think Dave is just a transphobic guy. I don’t think Dave is trans-bashing. I don’t think Dave is running around harming gays.” She expressed the views of her transgender friends, who are confused about how Chappelle, part of an “oppressed minority,” could discriminate towards others. “They’re saying to me, ‘How can this guy be a Black guy whose — you know, his heart beats for George Floyd, as it should, but when it comes to us, he doesn’t even — he doesn’t get it. Like, he just keeps making a joke,'” she said.
On the topic of Joe Rogan, whose anti-vaccination views created a domino effect of artists demanding accountability from him and Spotify, the platform which streams his podcast, Griffin said he “100 percent has the right to do [his] show wherever he wants” because “he is exercising his free speech.”
She later added that she wasn’t surprised Spotify “stuck with him” through the ordeal. (The company reportedly paid Rogan $200 million to stream the podcast.)
“Because when are we going to see any of these guys, like, really pay?” Griffin explained, eluding to other men like Andrew Cuomo, CNN’s Jeff Zucker and Louis C.K., all of whom she has strong opinions on.
“I don’t mean, like, pay. He should still do his show,” she clarified. “There are so many ways that Spotify could have done this. And they could have — either they could have just said, look, this is the kind of show we need you to do, because people are dying. They could have certainly given him a pay cut, which I’ve been given for saying controversial things.”
The comedian also weighed on Roseanne Barr, who was fired from her ABC reboot hit, Roseanne, in 2018 following what executives viewed as a racist tweet.
While assessing the age of “misinformation” we’re in, Griffin was quick to point to the fact that Barr has fallen down a “Q-Anon” rabbit hole.
“I saw Roseanne be treated like crap by men in the industry. Crap,” she said. “[They] didn’t trust her instincts, didn’t trust her comedic instincts, which were impeccable. And then, I think she sort of crossed over. And I don’t really know what led her to be MAGA, but I think she became Q first.”
“She’s actually the person that they make these documentaries about QAnon about,” she said. “She’s really — she really believes that stuff. And she hates me now, and she thinks I — she thinks I’m ugly on the outside and inside and blah, blah, blah. So she’s, like, way down the rabbit hole.”
As far as the future of her comedy, Griffin is hopeful that it will be more supportive and less nasty — like it was, she says, in the 1990s and 2000s.
“There was, like, all of this sensibility that was vicious, comedically. Like, vicious,” she said of that time. “I don’t think people have a taste for that [now].”
“Look, I’m just going to talk about the Kardashians, because I have an actual relationship with them, and they’re always doing something funny,” she said. “But I think that when I hit the stage again, I’ll probably talk more about, like, believe it or not, there’s a lot of really funny stuff in recovery … I can talk about that.”
“Pills are funny,” she said. “I know it sounds crazy, but we’re all going through stuff. I want to talk about what we’re all in together, and then I want to pepper it with my silly, whatever celebrity thing I happen to be actually immersed in.”
