Kathy Griffin and Andy Cohen. Shutterstock (2)
No holding back. Kathy Griffin slammed Andy Cohen and said she won’t watch CNN’s New Year’s Eve Live special to ring in 2023.
“Ugh. Every year someone sends me this clip around New Year’s Eve,” Griffin, 62, wrote via Instagram on Saturday, December 31, alongside a video of Cohen talking to TMZ in 2017.
In the video, the Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen host, 54, was asked about replacing Griffin on CNN’s year-end special, but pretended he didn’t know the comedian. “Who?” he asked. “I don’t know her.”
In her post on Saturday, Griffin added: “This guy was my boss for years. Decided whether or not I worked at Bravo. Can you imagine seeing your ex boss on TMZ like…this? Ouch! Anyway, I can’t wait to watch Miley [Cyrus] and Dolly [Parton] tonight. .”
She also included the hashtag, “misogynist.”
The My Life on the D-List alum hosted alongside Anderson Cooper on the cable news network for nine years. CNN fired Griffin in May 2017, days after she posed in a photo shoot with a bloody severed head meant to look like President Donald Trump. “We found what she did disgusting and offensive,” the network said in a statement at the time. “We are pleased to see she has apologized and asked that the photos be taken down.”
Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper. Adam Nemser/Startraks
Cooper, 55, slammed the photo in a statement at the time but claimed he was still on good terms with Griffin. In July 2017, the journalist was asked about their relationship on WWHL. “Yeah, we’re still friends, and look I said what I said about — I didn’t think what she said was appropriate, but I wish her the best and I hope she bounces back,” he told Cohen at the time.
Griffin later told New York Magazine that he didn’t reach out to her until the following August, more three months after the initial controversy. She ended their friendship at that point.
Earlier this month, she recalled how her life has changed since the photo controversy in an op-ed for Newsweek. “I learned that my old friends weren’t coming back. Anderson Cooper calling my photo ‘disgusting’ still hurts because I really adored him,” she wrote. “Andy Cohen saying ‘I don’t know her”‘after it all went down was, and is, painful, because I really enjoyed my time at Bravo.”
Cohen and Griffin’s feud has been ongoing for years. In July 2019, Griffin took another jab at Cohen while on Good Day New York.
“If he has a skill set, I’d like to know what that is,” the comic said of Cohen at the time. “It’s hard to name one.”
Weeks later, the Real Housewives executive producer told USA Today that Griffin lies about him. “She’s made up a lot of stuff about me in the past few years that has just been untrue and sad,” Cohen claimed. “I hope she finds some peace.”
Several of her standup specials aired on Bravo and her reality series, My Life on the D List, ended after six seasons in 2010.
While Cohen will return for his fifth year on CNN’s New Year’s Eve Live, it will be different this year as it will be a dry broadcast. Variety reported in November that CNN chairman Chris Licht wanted to take alcohol out of the broadcast.
“What [Chris Licht] said was that he didn’t want the correspondents out there drinking, but that he wanted Anderson and I to do our thing,” Cohen told The Hollywood Reporter. “So I’m happy to do our thing. My only directive for years on CNN has been to have fun on New Year’s Eve, and that is absolutely what I plan to do.”
Days before the broadcast, Cohen told Page Six that he and Cooper won’t be indulging on the air anymore. “We aren’t drinking, but we’re going to have a BLAST,” he said.