Melissa Rivers Slams Kathy Griffin’s ‘Fashion Police’ Exit

Melissa Rivers believes that Kathy Griffin disrespected and insulted her mother, the late Joan Rivers, when she announced that she would be leaving Fashion Police.

Melissa Rivers On Kathy Griffin

“My biggest complaint was the feeling that she kind of s— all over my mother’s legacy in her statement on leaving,” Rivers said during a Today show appearance. “I know everything was so heightened and everybody was so crazy, but that was my takeaway.”

“I know that was not an intentional reading of it, but that’s how I felt,” Rivers added. “By calling the comedy and the style of it old-fashioned – it was like, I understand what you were doing, you’re trying to save yourself, but don’t crap all over my mother to do it.”

Griffin announced her departure from Fashion Police in March after she shot just seven episodes of the E! show.

“My brand of humor, while unrepentant and unafraid, is all about context. There is plenty to make fun of in pop culture without bringing people’s bodies into it,” Griffin wrote in her statement, which she posted to Instagram. “Listen, I’m no saint – I’m a feminist AND a Gurrrl who loves an offensive joke or a well-timed barb and you will find plenty in my repertoire. But I do not want to use my comedy to contribute to a culture of unattainable perfectionism and intolerance towards indifference.”

Rivers, 47, chalks up the rocky Fashion Police run post-Joan Rivers as a symptom of trying to get the show up and running too soon after the loss of the legendary comedian.

“It really shows that we were a family. We went back too fast,” Rivers explained. “Just like a family, when the matriarch dies, the sisters started fighting, someone tried to marry in, not a great match, live and learn.”

Rivers has no plans to give up on making Fashion Police work. She’s currently holding meetings to find a way to successfully bring the show back from hiatus.