After a lengthy, unplanned hiatus, comedian Kathy Griffin is hitting the stage again.
“It’s been too long, it’s been like seven years since I came to Pittsburgh,” Griffin recently told TribLive. She will perform Tuesday at the Carnegie Music Hall of Homestead.
Griffin has been doing comedy since the 1990s and has recorded a record-breaking 20 televised stand up specials. She boasts Grammy Award and Emmy Award wins and has performed at some of the largest comedy venues in the country. Her Bravo! reality show, “Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List,” aired from 2005 to 2010. She’s always been controversial and known for speaking her mind, but everything changed for her in 2017.
She was the center of a firestorm of controversy after she posted a photo on social media of her holding what appeared to be the severed head of then-President Donald Trump. “I took a picture with a Halloween mask and was on the no-fly list, the Interpol list, was investigated by two agencies, the Department of Justice, the U.S. Attorney’s office and the Secret Service,” she said. “I went through that, and then nobody would touch me, and (I was) blacklisted and I now have complex PTSD.”
Thus the title of her new tour, My Life on the PTSD-List.
Since that incident, she has met a series of personal challenges, including addiction, sobriety and treatment for lung cancer that involved the removal of half of her left lung. “If nothing else, I am the best damn one-and-a-half-lunged comedian that money can buy,” she said.
The tour is partially about her own journey with post-traumatic stress disorder. “Because I do actually have it, and so I thought, well, this is unexpected. Whenever anything happens that’s, how shall I say, adversarial, I try to figure out a way to make it funny. The truth is, I do think you have to laugh at everything.”
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Griffin has performed for deployed United States military members in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Before her own diagnosis, she didn’t think it could apply to her.
“The show, it’s a little different because I do talk a lot about the PTSD stuff. I only want people laughing so it’s only my story, I’m not making fun of PTSD, I also thought it was only for combat veterans. … I am not looking to make fun of that situation.”
But don’t worry, plenty of the show’s runtime will be taken up by Griffin’s usual biting commentary about famous personalities. “I now live in Malibu, Calif. … It gives me a new slew of celebrities to torture. I live two blocks from Barbra Streisand, so it’s practically like she and I are friends. We’re not, she doesn’t really care for me to my knowledge,” she said.
“I pepper it with anything from going to Paris Hilton’s house for a party and the various mishaps I had there to going on vacation to Mexico with Sia and then everything going wrong. I’m still going to give you the Kathy Griffin celebrity razzle-dazzle. I am afraid of running into Mel Gibson in Malibu, I don’t need that kind of heat,” she added.
When one of her four dogs barked in the background, she paused to talk about how important they are to managing her mental health.
“I bring at least one dog with me at every leg of the tour and I rotate them out like Menudo, so who knows who I’ll bring to Munhall. It helps my PTSD for real, I have a doggie to cuddle up with at the hotel, I have the doggie chilling out backstage, I love it.”
She said that she hasn’t watched “My Life on the D-List” since it aired, but is considering a look at it with fresh eyes, now that it’s streaming on Peacock. “I wish I could do a rewatch podcast,” she mused.
Griffin feels like the stand up scene has changed since she started in the 1990s, but that sexism in the industry is just as prevalent as it’s ever been.
“Joan Rivers and I used to talk about it, and Joan Rivers said Phyllis Diller used to talk about it. … I’m going to be honest, I feel like there’s a lot of lip service that stand up comedy is less misogynistic.”
But now that she’s hitting the road again, she’s just glad to get to do the work of being funny for audiences. “I just want people to come and have a good laugh. … Every show I’m thrilled, every single ticket sold, I’m grateful.”
Kathy Griffin’s “My Life on the PTSD-List” tour will come to the Carnegie Music Hall of Homestead on Oct. 22. To get tickets, visit librarymusichall.com.