14 DAY TRIAL // Now that’s an unexpected announcement: just hours after she spoke for the first time of Kelly Osbourne’s shocking departure from E!’s Fashion Police after 5 years, Kathy Griffin is doing the same. She lasted only 7 episodes in total, after being asked to join the show following Joan Rivers’ death in August.
Her reason for leaving is even more surprising, as she explains in a post on her Facebook and Twitter: the show is simply too mean, too unfunny and too wrong for her to continue on board.
This wasn’t what she imagined
Griffin struggles to be very diplomatic about her departure, and to avoid as much as possible throwing any kind of dirt at her soon-to-be-former employers. She’s not succeeding because, in explaining why she thought she wasn’t a good fit for the show, she actually says that it was too mean, too unfunny and simply too intolerant for her.
She also hints that Fashion Police changed a lot since Rivers’ death and that, perhaps in order to compensate for her loss, producers decided to throw wit out of the window and go for crass jokes that could boost ratings by creating a scandal.
Like it happened with Giuliana Rancic’s post-Oscars joke about how Zendaya Coleman’s dreadlocks made her think she smelled of “patchouli oil and weed.” It was later revealed that writers wrote the joke for Rancic and that it wasn’t racially insensitive in the least, but producers edited the footage in post-production to make it look like it was.
This wasn’t what Griffin thought she was signing up for, she says in her post. She’s disappointed, in a way, going through the reasons why she chooses to stick to her comedy routine. The fact that the show is disrespectful to minorities, LGBT members and plenty others, just for the sake of getting a kick, ranks high on that list.
Comedy shouldn’t be mean, depends on context
Kathy Griffin has been criticized too for being crass, offensive and disrespectful, but, she says, she wasn’t any of these things if you looked at the context of the joke deemed that. Fashion Police pays no attention to context and just uses insults as a means to get people to tune in.
So after 7 episodes, she realized that she wanted no part of it.
“I thought that I could bring my brand of humor to Fashion Police so beautiful people in beautiful dresses could be teased when appropriate,” she writes. “I do not want to use my comedy to contribute to a culture of unattainable perfectionism and intolerance towards difference. I want to help women, gay kids, people of color, and anyone who feels underrepresented to have a voice and a LAUGH.”
In a separate statement, E! too confirms Griffin’s departure, and says that no replacement has yet been found. Even though it’s short 2 co-hosts, Griffin and Osbourne, the show will return on March 30, with Joan Rivers’ daughter Melissa sitting in temporarily for both.
Giuliana Rancic and Brad Goreski will be joining her.
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— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) March 13, 2015