Kathy Griffin is recalling the one and only time she appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — and claims that the host’s behavior during the interview made her cry.
In a 29-minute episode of her YouTube show Talk Your Head Off, the comedian shared her emotional memories of her 2017 interview with Stephen Colbert on the CBS talk show, which primarily revolved around her controversial photo shoot holding a recreation of Donald Trump’s decapitated head.
Griffin called Colbert a “dick” recalling his line of questioning as “laced with misogyny,” and claiming she believed the host could tell that he was making her cry during the interview.
Representatives for Colbert and The Late Show did not immediately respond to Entertainment Weekly‘s request for comment.
Griffin explained in great detail that she requested not to discuss the photo, as the conversation around the controversy had dominated her life for the past year after it received criticism from the president himself, prompted the Secret Service to investigate the comedian (which ended with her being “completely exonerated” of wrongdoing, in her words), and eventually led to her apologizing to the commander-in-chief (though she later retracted her apology).
The Late Show with Stephen ColbertThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert/Youtube
Kathy Griffin on ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’ in 2017
In her video, Griffin claims that a segment producer from The Late Show agreed, “We won’t talk about the picture.” However, in her recollection, the producer went back on his word when she arrived to the set of the show and told her “[Colbert] wants to talk about the picture.”
The comedian recalled being distraught and nervous, as she had hoped to plug her then-forthcoming performance at Carnegie Hall. “If you go down the road of talking about that picture, it can get really dark, and the details from the fallout from that picture are dark as well,” she said she told the producer. “[Colbert] knows that picture was covered, and he knows that my investigation was BS, and he makes fun of Donald Trump, and we all know Trump is nothing but a clown, so I think we’re like-minded on this.”
After trying to direct the conversation away from the photo, Griffin said she couldn’t escape from Colbert’s persistence during the interview. “He goes in about the Trump picture, but he goes in hard,” she recalled. “He went with the line of the questioning of the ‘What were you thinking?’ and the ‘You must have known it was too far,’ and those sort of thing. It was a line of questioning that I remember thinking, ‘Wow, he has way more of a bias against me and my right to take that photo than I imagined in my worst case scenario.'”
Griffin claimed that Colbert “kept going, and kept going” about the topic. “And then the tears came,” she said. “So I felt my eyes fill up, and I thought, ‘Oh God no, anything but this, anything but you’re a grown woman who’s a female comedian trying to prove that you can keep up with the boys. You cannot cry.'”
Griffin said that she successfully avoided allowing the audience to see her cry. “I am glad to say not one tear escaped my tear ducts, so I did not cry,” she said. “I did not have a tear that was visible to the audience. I don’t think the audience could tell that my eyes filled up.”
However, the comedian said that she suspects that the late night host was aware of her emotional state. “I do think Stephen could tell,” she alleged. “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. And I remember thinking, ‘You asked me to be on this show. I’m a guest. This is your show. This is your world.'”
Griffin went on to say that her perspective on the Late Show interview led her to detest Colbert. “I have such a low opinion of Stephen Colbert now,” she said. “He’s not gonna 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, bla bla bla. I’m so used to guys making statements like that about me, it’s ridiculous.”
The Late Show with Stephen ColbertThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert/Youtube
Stephen Colbert interviewing Kathy Griffin on ‘The Late Show’ in 2017
The comedian also accused Colbert of “punching down” at her. “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,” she opined. “What a dick, and to go for me of all people, just, to me, it had such a, it was so laced with misogyny, but that undercurrent of misogyny where he would probably be shocked to hear that anyone would accuse of him of having an ounce of misogyny. But I just remember thinking, ‘He would not talk down to the guys like this. He just wouldn’t. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him treat any of the guy comics like this.'”
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Griffin said that she released her tears as soon as the interview concluded. ” I walked off and I remember I was about one step away from the desk, and then the tears came, but I was still smiling and waving, and I could feel them coming down my cheeks,” she claimed. “The EP, executive producer, rushed over to me, saw that I was crying and I just said ‘What was that? What was that?'”
Griffin said that the producer tried to explain Colbert’s line of questioning. “He said, ‘He just couldn’t get over the picture. He just can’t get over it,'” the comedian claimed.
“And I go, ‘What’s for him to get over? I don’t understand. It wasn’t a picture of his decapitated head,'” Griffin recalled responding.
Griffin said that the EP’s full explanation for the host’s fascination with the photo stemmed from his religion. “He said, ‘Stephen’s really Catholic.’ And I go, ‘What? What does that have to do with anything? I was raised Catholic too!’ And he said, ‘I think that’s what it is.’ I just said, ‘Oh, okay, I can’t make any sense of that.'”
The comedian ended her story with a plea to the Late Show host. “I am just being honest to the best of my recollection, so Stephen Colbert, please don’t be a dick again and sue me,” Griffin said. “I just wanted to tell folks the wildest behind the scenes stories of any talk show I’ve ever done. And now you know why I haven’t been on that show since, and never will be again.”
Watch Griffin’s full video about her alleged experience on The Late Show above.
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