Kathy Griffin's Celebrity Run-Ins by Kathy Griffin
One year, I said to him, “So, Bar, every Grammy nominee’s performing here tonight. So many greats. So many legends. So many new faces. Who are you looking forward to seeing?”
“Jennifuh.”
Jennifuh? Oh. “Jennifer Hudson?”
“I luh-v Jennifuh.”
“Yeah, she’s incredible! Never lip-synchs. She’ll be great.”
“So-o-o-o lookin’ forward to Jennifuh … an’ I wanna see Johnny.”
“Johnny?”
“Johnny Mathis. Johnny’s gonna sing ‘Chances Are.’ I wanna see what Johnny’s up to.”
I admit. This one was my bad. I kinda thought Johnny Mathis was dead. (Oops.) Instead, he was performing? This was incredible. Seriously, I’m a kid from Forest Park, Illinois. I never thought I’d see this in my lifetime. I was practically crying. And yet that still didn’t stop me from thinking I was talking to a mob boss, with the whole “I wanna see what Johnny’s up to” Brooklynese. Is there going to be an offer that can’t be refused? I meant “re-fyoost.”
“Barry, that’s amazing. By the way, you must be excited about Jennifuh … er, Jenni-FER because she’ll be singing her new duet ‘Trouble’ with Iggy Azalea.”
Pause. “What’s an Iggy?”
Before I could start laughing, I said, “Well, Bar, an ‘Iggy’ is an Australian white girl who’s also a rapper. She and Jennifer have a duet, and I think you’re going to like it.”
An “ugh” escapes, then he jokingly added, “Is dat the tawk-singing?”
I said, “Yeah, that’s the talk-singing.”
“That’s when they lose me.”
Ooh boy. Well, when Jennifer Hudson came out and sang, Barry did this thing I’ve seen only a handful of these top music guys do. He leaned forward, elbows on the table with hands clasped, and rested his chin on his hands and closed his eyes. Clive Davis does this, too, and so does Quincy Jones. They’re purists about the music, about listening. They don’t care about the outfit or if somebody is being drunk or obnoxious nearby. They know how to tune it out. It’s pretty great to watch. Well, Barry did it for Jennifuh.
Then Iggy started.
Barry opened his eyes, turned, and said, “Get the jet.”
Manilow OUT.
MARS, BRUNO
Filipino Jersey Boy
It’s getting harder to do, but when I’m at a star-studded awards show like the Grammys and stuck sitting in the back with fans, interns, and assistants, I’ll jump up, run down to the front rows where the big names are clumped together, and grab a departing celebrity’s seat faster than you can say, “Shut up, Kanye.” The last time I successfully did it was 2012, when I stole the seat of a country singer who lost and left. (Why, oh why, would anyone leave???) I was on the aisle, a choice spot for being in trolling cameramen’s shots, and for craning one’s neck to see who’s around me, and for bolting if security realizes what I’ve done. In this case, after my self-actualized upgrade, I noticed that Bruno Mars was across from me to the right, maybe five feet away, and a few feet away to the left of me was my buddy Dave Grohl. Now, Bruno had already approached me earlier before the show and said complimentary things, which I thought was sweet. He was in a good mood. After all, he was up for at least five major awards, including song, record, album, pop performance, like, everything. But this was also the year someone else was up for all those same awards, a certain singer named Adele. Remember now, the televised Grammys don’t give out a whole lot of awards, but of the ones they do, most are in those big categories. I may not have had a legitimate front-row seat, but I did for the spectacle that was Bruno Mars getting visibly pissier every time he lost an award.
The first time he lost, he made a mildly stifled show of discontent, but then he looked at me, and I shook my head and mouthed, “You were robbed.” Which is maybe the worst thing you can do to somebody in that situation, fan the fires of their indignation when they’re supposed to act like they don’t care. So I did it again. Second loss, third loss, Bruno’s barely suppressing his outbursts and looking back at me with a “Can you fucking believe…” look and I’m all “Right back atcha” with an eye roll that says, “This is BULLSHIT.” Now, I knew that Dave Grohl was watching me do all this, because his eyes bored right into mine, and he made the slice across the throat with his finger, as if to say, “Too much. Not cute. Not funny.” I got it. But I have to say, part of me both loves the show I got to see and admires how this massively gifted star just wasn’t going to be anything but openly honest about being a sore loser, something I have absolutely no experience with whatsoever.
For the final award of the night, for which Bruno Mars was also nominated, he lost to Adele again. Bruno was still backstage after his performance when the live cameras caught his extremely candid reaction to losing once again. If I could have, I would have run backstage to “console him.” It took the full force of the Foo Fighters to shut my ass down.
MERCHANT, STEPHEN
British Bean Pole, Almost Fiancé
Ricky Gervais once suggested I go out on a date with his writing partner, the freakishly tall, nebbishy-looking, brilliant Stephen Merchant. They collaborated on the original British version of The Office and the HBO show Extras, and Merchant did his own HBO series called Hello Ladies. Dating him seemed a remote possibility, literally, since Merchant lived in England. But Gervais liked the idea, especially because, he said devilishly, “I talked to Stephen about you one time, and he’s scared of you.”
I rolled my eyes and said, “Well, can you also tell him that there’s my act, but there’s the human me?”
I spotted Merchant for the first time when I was having lunch at the outdoor patio of the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles. I walked up to him and said, “Merchant?!”
He turned to me, and it was as if all six feet seven inches of him began to shrink. “Oh no,” he said in that perfectly clipped British accent of his. “No, no. Scared of you. No, no. Scared. Please. No, no.”
It was so funny I couldn’t stop laughing. I was charmed by him instantly, but nothing came of it.
Then a little while later, I booked a one-day role on the Farrelly brothers film Hall Pass, which Merchant costarred in, and on the set, I ran up to him to get a selfie. As I was pulling him to the side, he continued the bit from before: “Oh dear. No, no. Petrified. Don’t want trouble. Please help. No, please. Someone. Anyone.”
I even got the Farrellys involved, telling them within his earshot, “Will you talk your skinny star out of being scared to fuck me? I mean, what’s the big deal? I could crush him, true, but other than that…”
And Merchant would keep chirping away, “See! See? This is what I mean. Hello? Haven’t said anything negative about you! Don’t want to be in your stage show! You look lovely! See! Being nice. Hello? Help. Don’t want trouble…”
Gervais really had put the fear of God into him.
MILLAN, CESAR
Dog Whisperer, Trainer of Humans
Look, I’m not a paid spokesperson for Cesar Millan, but I can tell you, he has come to my house twice and actually whispered at my dogs to the point where they behaved so well that I wished they could speak so they could tell me exactly what he said to them to convince them to act like completely different, perfect, magical dogs. My mistake was never getting him to train my ninety-six-year old mother. God knows she doesn’t listen to me.
Where was I?
After I got to know Cesar, he came to my house to interview me for one of his books, and basically, he wanted to know why an obnoxious comedian has a bond with dogs. I told him that I’m as normal as anyone else, that when I’m on the road, what gets me in my gut is missing Maggie and my dogs. It’ll be 3:00 in the morning, I’ll have just finished a show, had a meal, and what brings me to that calm, relaxing place is looking at videos of my dogs. Cesar welled up listening to me talk like that, and that’s why I love him. He’s the real deal about canines. “That’s what I want people to get,” he told me. “Dogs save lives.”
I adm
That being said, he’s also a great sport about my sense of humor. On the early seasons of Dog Whisperer, he was operating out of a South Central neighborhood that looked scarier than any of the dogs he was dealing with.
I told him, “Cesar, it looks like a fucked-up doghood.” I know, that is a very un-PC expression. I was just trying to make him laugh. I do think he should make an animated all-dog version of Boyz N the Hood, though.
He said, “Well, I’m not afraid.”
I said, “Of course not. You’ve got eighty pit bulls!”
But he really does have the touch. My dog Pom Pom is a secret assassin (possibly funded by Oprah Winfrey Inc.) who will not allow another dog into the home. And yet when Cesar visited—when I still had Chance and Pom Pom was new—he brought five dogs, and the effect was almost comical: Pom Pom sat like a princess on an imaginary tuffet, and Chance drooled. It was like Cesar brought the instant hex. He really will get your dogs to do things they’ve never done before, and I was that person saying, “Oh, wow. Pom Pom has never done that before!” I know, I sounded like every person who’s ever been on any episode of any of Cesar’s television shows. Look, I obviously don’t have the touch, and I admit I don’t follow up on the training Cesar tells me I’m supposed to. The minute he leaves, it’s back to the bad doggy behavior. Fine, maybe it’s my fault. But, I can’t resist joking to Cesar, “Look, why don’t you make the tagline at the end of every one of your episodes a little more honest? ‘I am Cesar Millan. I am the Dog Whisperer … until I leave your house and you’re screwed.’”
Cesar, if you’re reading this, you still have a standing offer to just move into my palatial mansion whenever you want. Just don’t leave. I need my sofas intact.
MORGAN, TRACY
Comedian, Next President
I once had a five-day commercial gig as part of a group that included me, Jim Gaffigan, Michael Ian Black, Debra Wilson, and Tracy Morgan. It was a great ad campaign, fun to do, and it’s where I met the indomitable, unforgettable Tracy.
My time with him was magical, because even though he was up and down—laughing one day at something inappropriate, crying the next over something that touched him—he said the kind of hilariously crazy things that kept you on your toes. He was exactly the way you’d think he’d be and could even joke about it. “Now, Kathy Griffin, I don’t know … if my queen doesn’t dole out my pills right, I’m not sure what’s gonna happen!”
Weirdly enough, I feel as if I share something in common with Tracy, in that we’re both 24-7 comics, almost out of necessity. If he and I happened to run into each other on the worst days of our lives, we are able to riff. With him, there’s no downtime. Comics are not always wild about other comics who are always “on.” But I will riff anywhere, with anyone, and Tracy’s such a genius—unfiltered in the best way—it’s fun to bite whenever he says something nutty.
“I’m about to get you PREGNANT, Kathy Griffin! That’s how FINE you lookin’!” You don’t respond to that by thinking, How dare he objectify me! If you’re Kathy Griffin, you say, “Tonight could be the night, Tracy. Let me find that last remaining egg somewhere deep, deep in my ovaries.” He clearly had no shame about his issues, whatever meds he was taking, and so on, so I wasn’t surprised that he allowed the producers of 30 Rock to make his over-the-top character Tracy Jordan a heightened version of himself.
If he offends people, and he has, I’m telling you, he doesn’t know it. Backstage at the Kennedy Center when Eddie Murphy was getting his Mark Twain Prize, Tracy’s appearance there was all anyone could talk about. He’d just made his triumphant return to Saturday Night Live the night before, after the debilitating truck accident that nearly killed him, and even Eddie Murphy was asking, “How is he?” But Tracy came out guns blazing and kicked ass, ignoring the producers’ ban on using the N-word by telling a joke that had that whole stuffy Kennedy Center audience in stitches.
I got a quiet moment with Tracy backstage that I’ll always cherish. We started reminiscing about our week together doing the commercial shoot, remembering details, talking about how much fun we had, and it gave me hope about the traumatic brain injury diagnosis he got from the crash. He needed to sit down for a second, and he admitted he was hurting, that doing Saturday Night Live and the Eddie Murphy tribute two nights in a row was hard. But he also said, “You know how it is, Kathy. As long as I can be making people laugh, that’s all I care about.” And I’m pregnant.
MULLALLY, MEGAN
Actress, Pal
I’ve known Megan for a long time, as in doing-student-films-together-in-the-’80s-and-’90s long time. She’s a dear friend, the kind who will only trot out the Karen voice from Will & Grace for my mom.
Well, during one of those long-ago student film shoots when we were struggling actors, she told me about auditioning for Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy movie, and for years afterward, I loved telling people what happened to her.
Megan’s an incredible singer, so I’d get all excited regaling friends, acquaintances, and talk show hosts with how she won the role of Breathless Mahoney after auditioning at Beatty’s house. And how she’d get those famous Warren Beatty phone calls at 2:00 A.M., asking if she’d want to come over. (You know, for SEX!) And how Megan was a struggling actress but not inclined to accept his advances, so on the third such phone call, after his “It’s Warren, do you want to come up?” she politely replied, “Warren, have I ever wanted to?” And how Madonna then swooped in and stole the role of Breathless from Megan because, well, she did respond to those phone calls in the affirmative. Can you imagine? Thinking your career was going to change overnight and that you’d be starring in a big-budget musical film only to find out Madonna used her feminine wiles to ruin the life of the adorable Megan Mullally in one day. Oh, how Hollywood can be BRUTAL! I just loved that story!
I had a feeling Megan hadn’t told me everything, though. We were together somewhere years after this story of hers had been a part of my repertoire, surrounded by people, and I said, “Megan, why don’t you tell the real story? You were banging Warren, then Madonna caught wind of it, and she stole the role from you! Are you so afraid of Madonna that you can’t be honest?!”
Megan’s eyes got wide. She laughed out loud and said, “Kathy, I love that you think my life is so exciting. But let me remind you what actually happened.” She told me she had auditioned for Breathless Mahoney. Warren Beatty did tell her that he’d be happy to take her to lunch or dinner anytime in a platonic way. And obviously, the role went to Madonna. Apparently, Madonna did not “steal” the role of Breathless Mahoney from Megan. According to Megan, she was never actually given the role. My version of this story is so much better that I have no shame about having told it to anyone that would listen for years. Come on, my version is torrid, juicy, and I haven’t met a gay man yet who didn’t believe it. After she heard the version I’d been generous enough to spread over the years, Megan said, “Okay, 10 percent of that story is true.” Ten percent is all I need, honey.
MURPHY, EDDIE
Comedy Giant, Recluse
I had a few lines in the movie Shrek Forever After, and as part of the promotion DreamWorks honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg gathered the big four—Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas, and Eddie—and those of us who voiced new characters, for a group photo at the Soho House in Los Angeles. The photographer only had ten minutes to get all of us, and I happened to be lucky enough to get seated behind Eddie.
I had heard all the rumors about him being unapproachable, that he doesn’t do appearances and whatnot, so this felt like maybe the only chance I’d get to meet one of my comedy idols. He was mellow enough and seemed to recognize me—“Oh yeah, you’re great. So glad you’re here”—and I realized I could walk away saying I met the great Eddie Murphy and that he was nice and not weird. But then
Well, of all chitchatty questions to actually take seriously, Eddie chose that one. He turned and quietly said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Well, most days I wake up in my mansion around 3:00 P.M., fight depression, and try to work up the strength to even get out of bed.” Whoa. Then he turned back around for the rest of the photos.
Needless to say, that honesty floored me, and it hit home to me what a guy like that has gone through. He’s a talent who’s had the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, and I absolutely loved how brutally frank he was in, of all places, a photo shoot, and to someone he didn’t even know. Was it that maybe something like that could only be said comic to comic? I have no idea. Five years later, when I was asked to pay tribute to Eddie at the Kennedy Center when he was given the Mark Twain Prize, I knew I had a great personal story about him.