The hardest
working woman in showbiz made a career playing to gay men --
and in the process became one.
OK, I’ve
got to admit it.
I was a little
disappointed when I met Kathy Griffin. I know. Don’t
hate me.
When I arrived at
her palatial Los Angeles estate, I was surprised to
find that I had only an hour with her before her trainer
arrived—plenty of time to conduct your standard
celebrity interview—but I’d assumed that
once I arrived, my meticulously prepared questions would be
thrown by the wayside as we curled up in her bed to
watch Dancing With the Stars. Or perhaps she’d
want to skip out to the Four Seasons to show the world she
was doing press, while we’d really be discussing
Heather Mills’s leg over dirty martinis. After
all, this is a woman who once said she’d do an
interview with a kitten if it would sell more tickets and
who faked a drunken fall in the streets of London in
an attempt to get into the tabloids. So when The
Advocate -- a magazine that arguably speaks best
to her key demographic -- asked her for an interview,
I expected something, well, more.
I was her third
interview of the day. She had gotten up at 5 a.m. to do
KTLA TV’s Morning Show to promote her already
sold-out engagements at the Kodak Theatre (you know,
the place where they hold the Oscars). As
Griffin’s assistant went to find her, I could see her
Emmy on display with the winning envelope and her
crumpled-up acceptance speech, in which she famously
announced, “Jesus can suck it. This award is my god
now.” When she appeared she was still wearing
camera-ready makeup, too cakey for real life, and her
signature sparkly eye shadow was faded but holding up.
We had been
scheduled to meet for this interview a week before, but
Griffin had personally called me to cancel. It seems Liza
Minnelli was performing for just one night before her
own gig at a casino in Richmond, Canada, and Liza had
requested to meet her. And meet her she did.
“I knocked
on her hotel room door. She opens it up. The room’s
pitch black,” Griffin tells me now.
“She’s chain-smoking in bed. I get in the
bed with her like Michael Jackson, and we watch The Asphalt
Jungle. There was a guy who had been at the restaurant
the night before—he’s one of these guys
who seemed completely gay to me but had the hot girlfriend.
I said to Liza, ‘Did you get a gay vibe from
that guy, or is it me?’ She goes, ‘How
would I know? Look who I married.’”
Let me be
fair—there was nothing disappointing about Griffin
herself. She was hospitable and gracious and full of
just this sort of juicy tidbit. She offered me water,
turned off her cell phone when it interrupted us, and
answered all my questions with candor. No, as with most
letdowns in life, I had actually disappointed myself.
I had expected that the moment we met, Griffin and I
would be instant best friends—after all, I am gay
and somewhat witty. If you watch her Bravo Network reality
show, My Life on the D-list, chances are that’s
exactly what you’d think too. Maybe this is
because Griffin comes off like someone you already know, or
maybe it’s because she can’t seem to
stop talking about us. In a way she’s kind of a
gay man herself.
So imagine my
surprise when we sat on her couch, and I had to conduct an
actual interview. Griffin had no intention of being my new
best friend—she was working.
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