Kathy
Is Still
Griffin
TWO YEARS AFTER HER CONTROVERSIAL TRUMP PHOTO
SPARKED A SCANDAL, THE COMEDIAN SHARES HER SIDE OF THE STORY
AND REVEALS WHAT HAPPENED BEYOND THE HEADLINES
By KATE COYNE
“I’m Kathy Griffin, and I never learn my lesson.”
The comedian and actress, perched daintily on
a bright-blue couch and sipping Diet Coke, jok-
ingly offers up a potential title for her next proj-
ect. To her detractors and fans alike, it probably
seems a fitting summation. In her four-decade
career in comedy, she has proved in her stand-up
routines that no subject is off-limits: not celebri-
ties, not her friends, not even her family. There is
nothing Kathy Griffin won’t say.
Except, when it comes to one specific matter,
that she’s sorry. Two years after a controversial
photo shoot involving a bloody image of President
Trump nearly ended her career, a reflective Grif-
fin, 58—who chronicles how the photo changed
her life in a new concert documentary, Kathy Grif-
fin: A Hell of a Story—acknowledges some regrets.
But, she declares, “I’m not apologizing.”
On May 30, 2017, Griffin was doing a shoot
with photographer Tyler Shields, known for
his provocative imagery. Inspired, she says, by
Trump’s comments about journalist Megyn Kelly
having “blood coming out of her eyes, blood com-
ing out of her wherever,” she posed holding up a
Halloween mask of the President with ketchup
poured on to resemble blood. The night before
the photo was posted online, Griffin recalls, she
went to bed without giving it a second thought: “I
PEOPLE August 12, 2019 65
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Photographs by JANA CRUDER
