For Kathy Griffin, fame — even a self-proclaimed D-list fame — has its advantages.
“It’s great getting known so that people know what to expect,” the Oak Park native said. “I used to play in between a bunch of men delivering one-liners and the prop comic with the chicken, and people were like, ‘What is she doing?’
“This way people know what they are in for.”
When her Bravo reality show, “My Life on the D-List,” returns at 9 p.m. Tuesday, viewers are in for something unexpected: Griffin in tears.
In the first episode, Griffin gets teary eyed when talking about her divorce from Matt Moline, whom she says took thousands of dollars from her.
Her troubles of the last few years didn’t begin or end with the couple’s separation, reconciliation and finally divorce. She also dealt with multiple eye surgeries and a small airplane she was on filled with smoke and had to make an emergency landing. Finally, in February, her father died.
Yet it’s all material she will share with her fans. “I have no qualms about talking about my dad,” she said.
John Griffin, who died in February at 91 from complications of congestive heart failure and multiple myeloma, had appeared on her breakthrough show, “Suddenly Susan,” in the 1990s, and on “D-List.” Fans also will see him in the third season of “D-List,” which was filmed before his death.
“That’s how he got through it,” Griffin said. “The medicine was the laughter.”
“I don’t put any restrictions on my act,” she said, adding that while some comedians draw the line at jokes about AIDS or cancer, she’s heard from people with those diseases that they want to hear the most tasteless jokes about their malady to help them deal with it.
That fearless mining for material means she uses everything that happens to her in her act (including a visit to entertain the troops in Iraq and the aftermath of a joke about Dakota Fanning going into rehab that brought demands for an apology from no less an A-lister than director Steven Spielberg), along with everything she thinks about contemporary pop culture and those who are famous just for being famous.
Her latest stand-up special on Bravo, “Kathy Griffin: Everybody Can Suck It,” got its name for a phrase she used losing an Emmy to the show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” In the special that airs at 8 p.m. Tuesday, she talks about how she jokingly left the Emmy ceremony after flipping off the crowd when she lost.
No one was amused, but it hasn’t stopped her from voicing her opinions. Griffin related her thoughts about the brouhaha earlier this year over Don Imus and the Rutgers women’s basketball team to her situation.
“I think anyone should be able to say anything they want. But there are consequences,” she said, pointing to her own act, which often trashes A-listers such as Oprah Winfrey and Tom Cruise, and which she has said got her banned from several late-night talk shows.
She made her stand-up mark with candid observations about her own dating life and by pulling the covers off the behavior of other celebrities.
Her act still gets her into public dust-ups with some of the most powerful people in the entertainment business. She has not been in a public spat with Oprah Winfrey or Spielberg lately, but she hasn’t lost her taste for the scrum.
“I would like to maim Dr. Phil. I don’t know if you can be arrested for saying you want to maim someone. Can you?” Griffin said. “I don’t think anyone would mind.”
This doesn’t make her popular with those she mocks, but it continues to win her admirers among her fans and other comedians.
Her stint as a reality TV star hasn’t changed her comedic tuning fork.
“Everything bothers me,” she said, adding that the comedy business is especially tough on women. She said she rejects Chris Rock’s notion that stand-up is the ultimate meritocracy.
“Chris Rock is a man,” Griffin said. “You’re absolutely held to a different standard as a woman.
“On the other hand, as opposed to regular showbiz, you can be Joan Rivers and still performing. People don’t care if I gain 5 pounds. They just want to laugh.”
CURT’s TAKE
“Everybody
Can Suck It” and “My Life on the D-List” 8, 9 P.M. BRAVO
You’d think a comic who’s preparing for her biggest A-List gig to date — playing Carnegie Hall — life on the would get recognized on the streets of New York. Not Kathy Griffin, who on the Season 3 premiere of “D-List” suffers the indignity of being called “what’s-her-name.” That’s the beauty of Griffin’s comedy: No matter how abrasive she gets toward A-listers, she laughs at herself too.
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CWWAGNER@TRIBUNE.COM
