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Kathy Griffin

AFP PHOTO / ROBYN BECK

The Warrior Comedian

Kathy Griffin redefines the phrase „funny as hell“.

by Riem Higazi

Kathy Griffin is the Emmy award-winning star of the cult TV-series ‚My Life on the D List‘, a best-selling author, a human rights activist, a Grammy winner, and a comedian extraordinaire.

This summer, a photograph of Griffin holding a Donald Trump mask covered in fake blood completely altered her life. The image spread across social media and had American people of all political persuasions freaked out. Griffin released a video apology almost immediately after the photo’s release, but the next day, Trump intensified the backlash by tweeting a claim that his youngest son Barron, was having a difficult time dealing with the image. Other members of the First Family, including Trump’s two older sons, launched an aggressive public campaign against Griffin.

Griffin went on to lose jobs, money, and friends and last week, she released a 17 minute video called Kathy Griffin: A Hell of a Story. Some people call it a rant, I call it an eloquently worded F.U. to all the misogynists and hypocrites of Hollywood and beyond.

I’ll be as honest as she is. I am and have been for many years, a huge Kathy Griffin fan. I wish I could say I had her number in my phone and simply called her up yesterday but the truth is, she’s coming to Vienna’s Gartenbaukino on November 18th and below you can hear what a professional pre-gig interview sounds like. Except, while we were professional, we got real personal, real fast.

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Riem Higazi: Hello!

Kathy Griffin: Hello! How are you? I’m very excited to meet you and I’m afraid to mispronounce your name. Is it Riem?

RH: Yeah. Perfect. Riem.

KG: Alright. I didn’t know if it was Ri-IIIEM.

RH: No. Straight-forward. And you know, it’s one of the most popular names in Egypt and Syria and Lebanon. I’m half-Egyptian and half-Austrian and if you’re in Egypt on the street in Cairo and you call out “Riem!”, thousands of women and girls and cats will run towards you.

KG: That’s all I ask. When I go to Cairo, I might focus more on the cats because I’m not so keen on people these days. In particular Donald Trump. Although I think if you actually called Donald Trump’s name, I don’t even think he would turn his head, he’s so stupid. He might not even remember it.

RH: Do you know what? By the way, I’m recording this, okay?

KG: Yeah. Good. Did you say that because you can’t believe I said that about our president?

RH: No! I just wanted to be, like…

KG: I’m not holding back with you, Riem. I’m not holding back. I can’t stand that fool.

RH: I’ll tell you what — when I saw the video, you know which video I’m talking about, the seventeen-minute one, when it was done, I just blinked at my iPad and all I wanted to do was hug you.

KG: Oh my gosh. That’s so nice. I actually understand. I don’t know if you’ve seen the video of Uma Thurman on the red carpet?

RH: Yes I have.

KG: I feel the same way. Look — I’ve teased Uma over the years, but that reaction is so legit and so real. I barely know her but I still felt like, I mean, I felt like she was shaking and my little part is to stand up on stage and tell my dick jokes and tell my stories and while I’m doing it, all this other stuff is going on around the world that you’re well aware of.

I decided to do that 17 minute video because frankly, it’s kind of part and parcel. I wanted to be honest about my own experience — for the first time in the history of the United States, a sitting United States President is using his power, the Oval office, his family (as if he could even name his grown kids), the Department of Justice, and now I’m on the Interpol List.

So, I love doing this tour. I don’t have one single day of paid work ahead of me in my own country and I’m just honestly so grateful to be coming to Vienna and to be going to places I’ve never had the opportunity to visit, much less perform in. So, I thought, why hold back? Why not tell people how I got here. Some people are saying I shouldn’t have done it. I just feel like at 57 years old and in the situation that I’m in and that so many women are in, that now is not the time to hold back- with comedy or when it just comes to plain old honesty.

RH: This is something that I find so admirable about you and I wonder how you do it. Because, especially in the last couple of months, you’ve been through it. So, I wonder, how can you be funny when you’re really sad?

KG: That’s the only way I really know how to do it. So, I know it’s sort of a classic comedian’s story, that’s how I get through difficult times, but it’s so innate in me now, because I’ve been doing it for so long, for so many decades, that the one thing that gives me a little peace is no matter what Hollywood thinks and no matter how much they actively try to keep me from just making a living, much less the threat of putting me in prison (because the charge that I was charged with was ‘conspiracy to assassinate the President of the United States’) is so unprecedented and insane that I process it in a way where I think about it so much, I try to figure things out and then believe it or not, I start to look for the funny in everything.

One of the things that I want to do when I hit the stage in Vienna, is — believe it or not - hear me out, I’m a little twisted but I’m going to read one of my death threat letters. I got so many that after a while, they were so over the top, that, I admit, a couple of them, made me laugh! I have a news flash: Trump and his followers-not so big on the grammar. While many of the letters were legitimately frightening , some of them… you just get to the point where you have to laugh.

I’m in a very unique situation in the United States but, how lucky am I? I’m quoting my dear-departed friend Joan Rivers. The last dinner she and I had together, she would always do this thing — I’d be complaining about misogyny or sexism (we would talk about that endlessly) and our last dinner, I’ll never forget, she kept tapping on the table and she kept saying, “But, how lucky are we?! How lucky are we that we get to take the stage!” And that’s one thing that honestly, no man can stop me from doing.

Kathy Griffin

EPA/ PAUL BUCK

Kathy Griffin won the award for Best Comedy Album at the Grammy Awards in 2014

RH: I can sooo hear Joan say that. I can hear her in my mind’s eye and see her. You know, in Austria, we’ve had a couple of weird things going down politically too.

KG: Oh! I’m all about it! I have my eye on Chancellor Kurz. By the way, can I just tell you, it makes me nervous that he even resembles Donald Trump Jr. I’m trying not to connect the dots but there’s actually a physical resemblance. I obviously don’t know the Chancellor but I do know Donald Trump Jr. and he is a moron. So I hope the resemblance stops there. I want to pitch something to you.

RH: Okay.

KG: What do you think about President Christoph Walz?

RH: Oooh. I like it.

KG: It’s an improvement. I’d still rather have a gay man or a female but at least he has a sense of humour. He’s very talented.

RH: And he can laugh at himself.

KG: That’s right! That is right. And that is something that Donald Trump is absolutely not able to do is laugh at himself and yet, I will admit, it’s a horrible time to be an American citizen but it’s a great time to be a comedian. I mean, Trump is so nuts, and in my opinion, in the full throes of Alzheimer’s and as well as whatever else is wrong with him. He really does give comedians a lot of material. Now, I will say, many many comedians are still scared and they walk away from the topic but you know I’m in the situation where, on May 31st I took a photo of a Halloween mask with ketchup and honestly, my whole life changed irrevocably.

So, I thought, I’m not going to go away…I thought, if one more person says, “Go away!”… I was honestly hearing things like, “Well, you’re going to have to go away for at least eight years.” I said, “I don’t have that kind of time! The planet will be melted by then.” I called my stand-up agent, because William Morris kind of ditched me, they didn’t know what to do and my publicist ditched me, she didn’t know what to do, and so I said (to my stand-up agent), “This is an unusual way to route a tour but can you find me a bunch of places where people don’t like Trump and it’s okay to make fun of him?”

Two days later I had 15 countries and 23 cities. So, I’m so thrilled to be able to stand on stage and really tell people what it’s like because there’s a lot of fear, confusion. The show will be 90% comedy but honestly, I’m also going to stand there and I’m going to tell the audience what my federal interrogation was like.

RH: Do you know what? I’m welling up.

KG: Oh no! (laughter, sniffling) Look. I also have a lot of funny stories about the Kardashians. In light of everything that’s happening, whether it’s Harvey Weinstein with sexual allegations or my personal story which is a career full of misogyny and fighting it, yeah! I have an act now that is different. It’s got all the jokes you could want but there’s a certain gravity that I feel compelled to bring to the stage.

I think that’s why people are turning out for the show. I have nothing to hold back. I have nothing to lose. I’m finding that the audience finds it kind of liberating. I was honestly nervous to do my show in Singapore. I was given all these rules and restrictions and warned and I was detained at the Singapore airport.

RH: You’re not allowed to chew gum in Singapore!

KG: Correct! And what’s funny is, I kept hearing that, “You can’t chew gum. You can’t spit.” Well, I’m not going to… I mean, first of all, I don’t know any comedians who spit on stage but if I ever get to that point, take me away to the insane asylum. But, the greatest thing happened. The show went off without a hitch and the audience was fantastic and I don’t mean to brag but every show has gotten a standing ovation so I think I might be kind of on to something. I think that folks are ready to hear the real deal from an old bird who has been doing it for a long time and clearly isn’t afraid to take on all the big guns starting with Donald J. Trump.

You know, it’s interesting. There are so many people coming after me. Unfortunately my good friend Anderson Cooper turned on me and one thing that’s difficult for me to deal with is the overwhelming number of people in the States, just the citizenry, who absolutely think I have this coming. It’s hard when your whole body of work disappears because Trump tweeted something. It’s disheartening. I go, wait a minute! I have a Grammy, I have two Emmys, I’m in the Guiness Book of World Records. People aren’t connecting the biggest dot of all which is: it frustrates me that they don’t understand the reason I’m shouting from the rooftop about these issues.

Guess what? It’s actually not for me at all. At all. It’s absolutely for the younger women who want to be in any field, whether it’s stand-up or any male-dominated field. It’s for LGBT folks who I have obviously been championing since long before Anderson Cooper came out of the closet and it hurts to have those groups turn on me and yet, I’m always going to fight for them and I’m hoping things will turn around. I’ve been watching videos with Eartha Kitt who was blacklisted by the Johnson Administration in the sixties and learning from these warriors.

I think if I can just keep doing it with jokes and a smile, it’s always been the best way to communicate but I’ll be honest. I don’t know if I can succeed. I don’t know if I can get people to connect the dots so I use humour and I use shock-value, obviously, and I’m bold and I swear but the facts are the facts and if you can name one other 57 year-old comedian touring the world, I’d like to hear it.

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