Nearly nine years later, Kathy Griffin is moving on with her career after a bloody anti-Trump protest photo went too far for many.
The 2x Emmy-winning comedian said that although “people still define me by” the 2017 photo of Griffin holding a fake severed head resembling the president, she’s learned to lean into the backlash.
“Oh, I think I’m uncanceled, which is a miracle to me because I didn’t think I would ever be uncanceled,” she told WUSF. “I didn’t work for seven years, and then when I went back on tour last time, which I made a special [Kathy Griffin My Life on the PTSD List] out of.”
Griffin added, “Now, I really own it, and I absolutely lean into it, because I was right, and I was ahead of my time.
“And so, when I look at that picture now, I’m very proud of it, because I know Donald,” she explained. “I’ve known him since the ’90s. I’ve worked with him, and the fact that he came for me specifically was so bizarre, because whenever I would see him in person, he would act like he was scared of me, and he would put four fingers up like a cross, and go, ‘Oh, here she comes. She’s gonna be tough on me. Don’t make fun of the hair.’”
In May 2017, four months after Trump’s first presidential inauguration, Griffin posed for the Tyler Shields photo, holding a fake bloody decapitated head in the style of ISIS.
“I sincerely apologize,” Griffin said in a video at the time. “I am just now seeing the reaction of these images. I crossed the line…. I went way too far. The image is too disturbing. I understand how it offends people…I get it.”
As backlash ensued, CNN fired Griffin from her New Year’s Eve co-hosting gig with Anderson Cooper, and she was cleared in a federal investigation into the photo.