Joan Rivers is the only multimillionaire who can admit she got a reality TV show out of her cross- country move to live with her millionaire daughter and still leave you laughing about the absurdity of it all.
But that’s the 77-year-old showbiz icon’s stock in trade: from her award-winning, emotionally raw documentary, “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work,” to the exhaustive number of stand-up gigs she insists on booking every year.
For more than a half-century, Joan Alexandra Molinsky Sanger Rosenberg has made merriment out of the most painful moments in her life, making herself bulletproof to shame or criticism in the process.
On Tuesday, she took it to another level, documenting the process of leaving her beloved New York to live with daughter and longtime TV partner Melissa Rivers in Los Angeles for the WE cable channel show “Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best?”
Her latest controversy: getting dropped from the Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends” morning show after she criticized conservative hero Sarah Palin. (A producer on the show later said the cancellation was a mistake.)
Q: You once blamed Fox for canceling your ’80s-era late-night talk show and driving your husband to kill himself. Why can’t you get along with Fox?My second job I’ve been fired from by them. (Laughs.) Age makes it all funny. You look at (Fox owner) Rupert Murdoch’s appointment book, and it says, “Tomorrow’s my fourth wife’s birthday, and it’s time to fire Joan Rivers again.”
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Q: For you, Fox is like that ex-boyfriend you never quite get out of your hair.Can I say that? Give me that quote. That’s a great quote. But who would think, as Melissa said, with all the world situation and everything going on, that’s what they’re upset about? We were told it came from much higher up.
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Q: Tell me about how you wound up touring with Don Rickles.I love him. I think he gives a master class in comedy. I mean, I go on first usually ’cause I get out early. . . . I’m home and in bed, and Don is still going, “So you’re a hockey puck.”
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Q: Your documentary has won all kinds of accolades, mostly because you’re so honest about all the sadness in your life.You know who enjoyed it the most? People in the business. Al Pacino said to me it’s a wonderful film. Robert De Niro had a friend of his watch it three times because they’re writing a film about a comic. It’s really hit people in the business.
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Q: Because they see themselves in what you do?I think because nobody’s ever said, “I’m scared. I’m frightened.”
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Q: On your TV show, you came to Melissa’s house carrying the ashes of all these friends and family who have passed away, including somebody you couldn’t identify. Joan, this is kind of morbid, isn’t it?No, no, these are my darling friends, and when I move, they move with me. I just feel it’s very comforting, you know. I have a ghost in my apartment, and I know she keeps me well. I have (husband) Edgar’s ashes, and I have my old hairdresser Jason’s ashes, and I have my dear friend Tommy’s ashes and Vinny’s ashes. I’m comfortable. Here are my friends.
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Q: Have you written in the will who gets you?When I end up cremated, I want everybody tossed in with me . . . and all my dogs. Melissa’s going to need two days to sprinkle that cr–.
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