Kathy Griffin is looking back on the night her photoshoot with a bloodied replica of former President Donald Trump‘s head went public.
In an op-ed for Newsweek published Wednesday, Griffin, 62, shared that on the day the image hit the internet, she had dinner plans at her home with a slew of celebrity guests.
“The night of the Trump photo, I happened to have planned a dinner at my house with Melanie Griffith, Rita Wilson and Kris Jenner. I’d quite literally had the worst day of my career and the three of them showed up looking a million dollars and I was in my PJs,” she wrote. “It turned out that they were quite wonderful to talk to that night. So much so I wondered: Might it all just stop tonight?”
However, the repercussions piled on. Griffin added, “The hatred from the right was more intense than I could have thought, but not that surprising. But the left wing being so taken by this campaign against me was hard. It was just too much for me.”
She said that her life quickly changed, with most of her career being put on pause.
“I learned that my old friends weren’t coming back,” Griffin continued. “Anderson Cooper calling my photo ‘disgusting’ still hurts because I really adored him. 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.”
Prior to the scandal, Griffin was performing several stand-up shows and executive produced her show Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, which aired on Bravo from 2005 to 2010.
After the photos featuring Trump, the actress was fired from co-hosting CNN’s New Year’s Eve special, investigated by the Secret Service, put on a “No-Fly” list, and saw many of her stand-up gigs canceled.
“I think I’m still banned from most of the talk shows, but Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers were great, they were the only two that would have me on,” she explained in the Newsweek essay. “Aubrey Plaza brought over a casserole two days after everything blew up. I don’t think I’d even changed my f—ing pajamas. That was very special and meaningful. Those moments really go a long way; it’s another person, another beacon somewhere on the horizon.”
Griffin returned to television for the first time in five years when she was cast in season 5 of HBO Max’s Search Party as a conspiracy theorist named Liquorice Montague for four episodes. Shortly after filming the part, Griffin underwent surgery for lung cancer treatment.
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