June 14, 2012 A&E » Q&A

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Kathy Griffin's jokes never hurt anybody 

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It's a very punk rock approach, too ...

I love that you say that. I had an old musician friend who used to say that, and I always loved that. He said the same thing about Joan Rivers, too. He went to see Joan Rivers live - straight guy musician - and he's like, "She is very punk rock! She fucking says anything she wants," and that's why I love people like Joan Rivers and Don Rickles. I love those people, and in Atlanta there's Margaret Cho! I love watching people that are fearless get on stage, and as you're watching them you just really don't know what they're going to say next. Trust me, when I'm at the Fox it will be very improvisational. I kind of know what I'm going to talk about but there's a lot of room for something that came up that very day.

A lot of what you talk about covers topics that legitimately make people kind of angry, like reality TV. Is it cathartic for you to just get out there and start talking about these things?

I definitely have what they call a burning desire to hit the mic. I am someone who has to do stand-up - its part of my DNA. Like I said, doing the talk show is fantastic and I think the Bravo people thought I would kick myself off the road but I said no, no, no, doing the road is going to feed the talk show, doing the talk show is going to feed the road. But with or without "My Life on the D List," or the talk show, I will always do the road. I started doing a little stand-up, and then more stand-up and more standup, and it's truly my passion. I have to do it, and no matter what, if it was going through my father passing away, or going through a divorce, when that moment happens, when its 7, 8, or 10 o'clock, whatever the show times are at the Fox, for those two hours, I am in stand-up mode and I love it, and I'm probably the happiest when I'm on stage.

Do you deal with much celebrity wrath over your jokes?

You'd be surprised by how many celebrities are really offended by the littlest things. Sometimes a celebrity will be mad at me because I said something scandalous, and sometimes they get mad because I got their age wrong by one year. It's endlessly amusing to me that people would get offended, especially in this online world. God knows I've been on TMZ where they've taken a picture of me without makeup and called me "Swamp Thing." You gotta laugh. You'd think by this time most celebrities would get it. One thing that's nice about getting older is more of them are starting to get the jokes, and that's a great thing. But when they don't get the jokes, it kind of helps the act.

But truly, I don't think I've hurt Oprah one bit. All my Oprah jokes have left her standing. She and Ryan Seacrest are going to be just fine. So are the Kardashians.

Their reactions to your jokes are very un-Sun Tzu ...

And now my new special is going to be called Kathy Griffin Un-Sun Tzu. I love that you think my demographic even knows what the fuck you're talking about! See, now you're in the act.

That would be awesome!

That's how it happens, and I'm just going to keep quoting The Art of War and be like this is your fault, this is your journalist.

First of all, everybody is fair game, but certainly the Kardashians, certainly the ones who laugh all the way to the bank. They put themselves out there. There're dealing with lawsuits over whether or not Shape-Ups give you a Kim Kardashian butt, whether or not their credit card takes this much money. It's all part of the deal. No one has suffered a career loss from my harmless little jokes. It's all in good fun.

I love hearing the soccer mom saying, "Oh my god, this is the first night I've had without the kids in two months and I need to laugh." I love to hear from the gay guy saying, "You know what, it isn't the easiest thing in the world to be an openly gay person in suburban Georgia." I love the heterosexual guy who was dragged by his girlfriend say, "You know, normally I wouldn't go see a female comedian but you made me laugh really hard." That's my favorite thing. That's why I love performing live. And everybody is allowed to have whatever reaction they want. And seriously, I've had people walk out, I've had people write letters, I've had people say there're coming to see me for the seventh time. And as an audience member, as long as you don't heckle me, you're allowed to have whatever reaction you want. But number one is laughter.

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