Kathy Griffin started doing stand-up comedy around 1990, and it wasn’t long before the road brought her to Orlando for the first time. “It was at the old Hard Rock Cafe,” she says via Zoom from Canada. “I remember doing the show in what was the club and, look, I’m fortunate enough to play theaters now, but I’m not gonna lie, those club dates were rough!” (She’s talking about the original Hard Rock Live, which closed in 1998 and was demolished in 2011 to make way for the current version, where she has also performed.)
Griffin’s current tour is called “My Life on the PTSD-List,” and she’s bringing it to the Plaza Live this time around. “Believe it or not, a nice theater can make a real difference, because the audience shows up in a different way in a theatrical setting than for a club,” says Griffin, who played there on her last tour. “I’m really more of a storyteller. I don’t do one-liners, and I don’t do crowd work, which I know is really trendy now.”
Suffice to say that her relationship with our community goes back to the 1990s, and it continues now into a new decade. When Griffin plays the Plaza Live, it will be her first Florida gig in seven years, owing to the exigencies of the pandemic and, well, other stuff. Lots of other stuff.
Since she last played here, Griffin has been married and divorced. She survived the pandemic, while losing her mom and her sister. She was then diagnosed with lung cancer, even though she was never a smoker. When it rains, it pours.
“So I have half a lung on my left side,” she says, “and a freaking paralyzed left vocal cord, from the surgery, and now I have to use a special headset microphone. But it’s very rock & roll — it makes me feel like Janet Jackson!” She’s also three years sober now.
Griffin, who turns 60 later this year, has devoted roughly two-thirds of her life to the performing arts. She was born in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, a major force in American comedy for decades as the home of improv powerhouse Second City. Second City produced a big chunk of the early Saturday Night Live cast back when Griffin was still in high school. Her initial passion was acting, specifically musical theater, and she moved to Los Angeles right after graduation.
Generally speaking, America’s formal introduction to Kathy Griffin came 28 years ago, when Suddenly Susan began airing on NBC in September 1996. The much-hyped sitcom starred Brooke Shields and Judd Nelson in a prized Thursday night time slot, back when “Must See TV” was at its peak. (It was also one of a number of shows set at newspapers, magazines and television shows, a popular trope in that era.) The show drew decent ratings over its four-year run, but today the only thing we remember is Griffin’s star-making turn as Shields’ sidekick Vicki Groener, which earned her a spot in the industry that she has not conceded since.
Griffin’s momentum from the ’90s carried over into the 21st century, and she became a staple of U.S. television, especially on cable, earning household-name status based on two key projects. The first was Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, a reality show that ran on Bravo from 2005-2010, named after a 2004 comedy special that aired on that same channel. The second was her essential role as the comic relief during CNN’s iconic New Year’s Eve broadcasts, which also featured lead anchor Anderson Cooper and Bravo boss Andy Cohen.
Griffin’s life was forever altered by a fateful shoot with the controversial photographer Tyler Shields in 2016; the resulting picture (which you may have seen, or heard of) caused massive complications to her career, some of which can never be fixed. This was a case in which Griffin’s unabashed status-seeking backfired on her; she was suckered into a stunt that made her one of the first high-profile victims of what is now understood as a vicious, virulent socio-political subculture There were the same folks who later stormed the U.S. Capitol once, and may very well do so again. Besides the hate mail and death threats, the personal and professional price she paid was, in a word, “yuge.” Most notably, she was fired from the CNN NYE in 2017, which has been a drunken shitshow ever since.
By her own account, Kathy Griffin’s mouth cost her her job on Hannah Montana and has gotten her banned from the Tonight Show, the Apollo Theater and The View (at least twice). She also lost the Squatty Potty gig, got briefly banned from Twitter, was put on watchlists by Homeland Security and Interpol (not the band).
The Plaza Live show will be the 34th date of her current tour; she has at least 15 more booked through the rest of the year, with more gigs being added whenever possible. Griffin’s already pushing herself very hard, but for her, there is no other way. Her hyper-confessional style may verge on oversharing, but for her the process is therapeutic, more now than ever before. No matter what happens, Kathy Griffin will never stop, and that’s bad news for everyone trying to keep up with her.
Subscribe to Orlando Weekly newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | or sign up for our RSS Feed
This article appears in May 15-21, 2024.