Kathy Griffin Is Not Nicole Kidman (2005 BRAVO TV)

She\'s NOT KidmanrnrnComic Kathy Griffin is serious about loving her D-list status: It lets her poke fun at Nicole, Oprah and the rest of those A-list superstarsrnrnBY DIANE WERTSrnSTAFF WRITERrnrnJuly 31, 2005rnrnYou know the public\'s obsession with showbiz has really turned the country on its head when the queen of celebrity culture is also its court jester.rnrnKathy Griffin is in hog heaven. The inexplicable romance of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, Clay Aiken\'s enigmatic sexuality, Oprah\'s puffed-up Oprahness - they\'re ripe for the ripping, and the quick-witted Griffin is raring to go. This is the moment for her biting comedy routines about spoiled superstar (mis)behavior, as showcased this Wednesday in Bravo\'s 9 p.m. stand-up special, "Kathy Griffin Is ... Not Nicole Kidman."rnrnThe hour\'s celeb lacerations - "I say things that are so honest," she tells the crowd, "I could never take them back" - lead into her new six-week reality series, "Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List" (Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on Bravo). Its fly-on-the-wall chronicle of Griffin\'s daily career climb dovetails nicely by exposing the lower rungs on the showbiz ladder.rnrnMaking the \'seen\'rnrnWhen you\'re not Nicole and trying to sustain whatever smidgen of celebrity you\'ve got - and you\'ve already made fun of yourself, so "The Surreal Life" won\'t help - you have to spend your nights attending Hollywood events to be "seen." You work the press to keep your name in print. You promise magazine coverage of your house in exchange for free stuff to furnish it with. You host charity fund-raisers for stuffed shirts who aren\'t remotely your audience. And you bomb, big - all with the reality cameras rolling.rnrnBut let\'s back up a bit. Free stuff? You\'ve heard of the celebrity gift bag, the sack o\' freebies handed out at such glitzy events as awards shows to stars who could probably buy the enclosed luxury items 10 times over. On Wednesday night, we see Griffin, 38, in her extravagant house - sleek and sprawling on a Hollywood hilltop - trying to cadge herself a free sofa in the first "D-List" episode.rnrn"I have a big monthly nut, that\'s why," she explains in walking us through this perverse maze of reverse charity. Chatting in her swank hotel suite while visiting Manhattan, Griffin mentions that she\'ll be heading downstairs to meet with the manager to try to get her room rate halved ("We even shot the reality show here sometimes").rnrn"I\'ve got a big monthly nut. I\'m paying people," Griffin says within earshot of assistant Jessica, who keeps the star on schedule and co-stars in her "D-List" reality along with Griffin\'s camera-shy husband, computer consultant Matt Moline. "The house is my one extravagance," Griffin says. "I\'m not a clotheshorse, I\'m not somebody who buys things, I don\'t buy jewelry. So I bought a frickin\' expensive house, and I am fighting to the core for it. Like it\'s my child."rnrnShe\'s talking so fast that the tape recorder sounds as if it\'s on fast-forward. But that\'s just Griffin\'s Chicago-bred patter, clicking along to keep up with her brain, forever scanning the Hollywood horizon for absurdity to satirize.rnrn"The more money you get, the less you have to buy things," she admits. Which just seems wrong. "I hear you. And I agree. [But] here\'s the karmic balance. I\'m a million times more suable. I have people coming after me constantly. I have the maid who supposedly fell and hurt herself. And you also get gouged a lot. If you\'re a car dealer and someone famous walks in, you\'re gonna for sure not give \'em a deal. I take my dogs to the vet - how come my vet bills are, like, 50 times more than before I was on television?"rnrn\'I wanna be funny\'rnrnGriffin\'s claim to fame beyond stand-up is playing Brooke Shields\' sidekick from 1996 to 2000 on NBC\'s "Suddenly Susan." But that business has dried up. Sitcoms seem to be dying, and their female characters are painfully formulaic anyway. "When I audition for roles," says Griffin, "they\'re all the same: I have five children, and I\'m married to the bald, potbellied guy who watches football with his buddies, and there I am in the kitchen, and I just say, \'Honeeeey,\' and that\'s it. I wanna be funny. That\'s what I do."rnrnShe also watches reality TV, to which she\'s genuinely addicted. Griffin helped lead the bandwagon with her 2001 MTV viewing-party series, "Kathy\'s So-Called Reality," dishing whatever happened that week on "Survivor" or "Big Brother." She worked hard to win playing ABC\'s 2003 "Celebrity Mole: Hawaii," and hosted NBC\'s first "Average Joe." In fact, "I still have \'Amazing Race\' parties and \'Survivor\' parties and \'Bachelor\' parties. Although, that last \'Bachelor\' - I mean, they should have had to pay those girls." Her observations aren\'t just sassy, they\'re smartly informed, which connects with the die-hard fans of the much-slammed genre. It was a logical progression to lampoon the other "reality" now dominating pop culture - the minutely reported details of celebrity romances, tantrums, arrests and caught-on-tape naughtiness.rnrnHer Bravo stand-up routine gets much mileage from the night of the Billboard Music Awards, when fellow presenter Ryan Seacrest of "American Idol" thought he\'d be amusing by ripping Griffin\'s blouse open. She also recounts appearing on Oprah Winfrey\'s show, where the host "has gone cuckoo." Griffin says, "I like to think that\'s what makes my act unique, is that they\'re my personal stories with the celebrities. So it\'s not just \'I think Oprah\'s crazy,\' it\'s \'Here\'s what happened the day I met her.\'"rnrnNot seeing eye-to-eyernrnThink she\'ll be guesting again? "It\'s over for me and Oprah," Griffin says flatly, knowing some folks just can\'t take a joke. "And I\'m so bummed because I have this whole Lasik nightmare I\'ve been going through [a botched procedure has forced five more surgeries in an attempt to save the sight in Griffin\'s right eye], and I was thinking how it would be the perfect thing for Oprah" to raise awareness of the procedure\'s risks. Too bad Griffin\'s take-no-prisoners truth telling makes her "a big bridge burner. But you know what? Some of those bridges have to be burned down. I mean, really - does Tom Cruise think he\'s gonna get by me?"rnrnGriffin even strips away her own Hollywood hypocrisy. "I had a brow lift two years ago, where they take your eyebrows and put them on a whole other part of your head," she says. "I wasn\'t gonna talk about it. It was, like, \'Oh, it\'s so shameful.\' And everyone in Hollywood acts like they don\'t get plastic surgery, which is the biggest load of --- ever. That\'s when I can\'t shut my mouth. When I hear Teri Hatcher saying she hasn\'t had any work done - and she looks Korean, so you tell me. That\'s where I come in. I can\'t even stop myself, it\'s so ridiculous."rnrnBut Griffin can indeed hold back when she wants to. She won\'t go after the few stars with whom she actually socializes. "Like here\'s who I\'m friendly with. I\'m really friendly with Joan Rivers. I\'m friendly with Roseanne. I\'m friendly with Howard Stern. I\'m friendly with Bill Maher. I\'m friendly with all the provocateurs. I get along with a lot of people that are supposed to be horrible." Those folks already have a sense of humor about themselves, she says, "and that\'s probably somebody I\'m least likely to go for."rnrnTo D or not to DrnrnThat, and somebody who\'s struggling with the same kind of D-List celebrity Griffin is. As the Bravo series portrays in stark detail, it\'s a full-time job just keeping that showbiz gig going - promoting yourself, selling stand-up tickets, riding herd on publicists and agents, turning over enough income to maintain your status. It\'s not the cushy lifestyle that fans often envision. "Honestly, I feel like a used-car salesman," Griffin says. "I would say more than anything in my life, my time is spent selling tickets. I\'m constantly doing phoners . I\'m constantly doing The Morning Zoo . I did one two weeks ago, and I\'m, like, \'OK, what are the DJs\' names?\' so I can make it a little personal. They\'re, like, \'You\'ll be talking to El Jefe and The Dove.\' I mean, that\'s my life. I wake up, and I call El Jefe and The Dove."rnrnNot that she\'d trade it in to move up in the Hollywood pecking order. "I think right now is actually a very tough time to be an A-list celebrity, because there\'s a hostility that wasn\'t there a year or two ago. Like the thing with Tom Cruise getting squirted in the face with water . Like Lindsay Lohan getting hit with that car ." When Ellen DeGeneres recently asked Griffin if paparazzi were camped out on her lawn yet, "I said, \'Ellen, I can barely get the gardener to come to my lawn.\' But the truth of the matter is, that would suck. That would suck to have a photographer take a picture of your kid or your house or whatever. So I\'m gonna stay right here on the D-list where I belong."