Kathy Griffin has some selection phrases for fellow comic Stephen Colbert.
Griffin argued Tuesday on her present “Talk Your Head Off” that the 2018 “Late Show” interview she had with Colbert was a “bullshit ambush” over the notorious photograph she took a 12 months earlier with a bloodied prop of President Donald Trump’s head.
“I didn’t want them to be aware of what was really happening,” she mentioned about Colbert’s viewers. “Because what was really happening was a bullshit ambush. But I thought that was such a low blow. And there’s a thing in comedy called punching up or punching down.”
“I’m very much on the D-list. Everybody knows that,” Griffin defined, including: “And Stephen Colbert is an A-list comic. He has accomplished just about everything you can as a comedian and he’s wildly talented and he’s obviously very bright, but man — what a dick.”
Griffin confronted widespread criticism after posing for photographer Tyler Shields with the pretend Trump head. She was not solely fired as co-host of CNN’s New Yr’s Eve programming but in addition questioned by the Secret Service — and confronted potential legal expenses.
Griffin mentioned Tuesday that she was advised solely shortly earlier than the interview that Colbert would elevate the topic, regardless of her prior request that he not. When she defended the photograph by pointing to free speech legal guidelines enshrined by the First Modification, Colbert pushed again.
“There are limits to, though, what you can say about the president of the United States,” the CBS host argued throughout the December 2018 broadcast, “having specifically to do with harm against the president of the United States.”
When Griffin famous that she didn’t trigger any, Colbert replied, “Well, you were holding up a severed head” — main her to state “it was a mask” coated in ketchup. Griffin mentioned Tuesday the confrontation was “laced with misogyny” and that she held again tears throughout the interview.
She recalled absolutely bursting into tears after the phase and mentioned a producer rushed over to clarify Colbert “just couldn’t get over the picture” as a result of he’s “really Catholic.” Whereas her emotional misery flew below the radar on the time, Griffin believes Colbert was conscious of it.
Representatives for Colbert didn’t instantly reply to a HuffPost request for remark.
Scott Kowalchyk/CBS Picture Archive/Getty Pictures
“I don’t think the audience could tell that my eyes filled up,” she mentioned Tuesday. “I do think Stephen could tell. It did not stop him. I did not feel he had any empathy, but I did feel he had an understanding of what was happening. And that’s what made it worse.”
The comedian went on to notice that she was an enormous fan of his “subversive” earlier work on “The Colbert Report,” which excoriated hypocritical politicians on a nightly foundation from 2005 to 2014, however that, in regard to his “Late Night” gig, she’s going to “never be on the show again.”
“I have such a low opinion of Stephen Colbert now,” she defined. “He’s not going to hear about this, but if he does, he’ll probably issue one of those statements saying I made the whole thing up and that I’m irrelevant and that he didn’t know I was crying, blah, blah, blah.”
Griffin beforehand revealed that the dying threats she acquired because of the photograph had been so relentless that she obtained hooked on painkillers — and secretly tried to take her life. In 2023, Griffin disclosed she had an “extreme case” of post-traumatic stress dysfunction.
Watch the complete episode from YouTube beneath:
