Kathy Griffin admitted she “went too far” when she posed with a fake bloody mask designed to look like the head of President Donald Trump. But her mea culpa seems to be doing little to stave off the growing backlash.
Several shows of Kathy Griffin‘s Celebrity Run-In comedy tour have been scratched as venues across the country are distancing themselves from the comedian, including in New Jersey, New York, New Mexico and Pennsylvania, according to the Associated Press.
The Community Arts Theater in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, announced on its site that Griffin’s scheduled show had been canceled “due to the recent controversy surrounding Kathy Griffin and the concern for the safety and security of our patrons and staff.”
The fallout from the photoshoot was swift. On Wednesday, toilet stool company Squatty Potty announced it was dumping Griffin from its recent ad campaign and CNN issued a statement announcing it was firing Griffin from its annual New Year’s Eve program, which Griffin has cohosted with anchor Anderson Cooper for a decade.
In a press conference Friday, with lawyer Lisa Bloom, Griffin acknowledged that she wasn’t sure she could survive the backlash.
“I don’t think I will have a career after this,” she said. “I am going to be honest, he broke me. He broke me. And then I felt, ‘This isn’t right. This is not right. And I apologized because that was the right thing to do an I meant it.”
Griffin explained that the project was supposed to be a parody, meant to reference Trump’s remark last summer that former Fox News host Megyn Kelly had “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of wherever.”
But even through her tears, she vowed to continue “making jokes about this guy.”
“I’m not laying down for this guy,” she added.
7 People Defending Kathy Griffin After Decapitated Trump Photo Shoot (Photos)
Kathy Griffin's photo of herself posing with the severed head of Donald Trump has been met with widespread condemnation and already cost the comedian her gig at CNN. But a few individuals are still publicly standing by Griffin, even if they don't entirely approve of her actions.
Jim Carrey came to Griffin's defense when asked about the photo at the premiere of his Showtime series "I'm Dying Up Here." Carrey told Entertainment Tonight that it's Griffin's duty to "cross the line at all times," adding that comedians are the "last line of defense."
Getty Images
Ricky Gervais also defended Griffin in an interview with TheWrap, saying that the photo was in poor taste, but ultimately harmless. "The only way you could say she went wrong was that it was a bit crass," Gervais said. "It wasn't great art. But OK, let’s say it was bad art. So what? Nobody got hurt. That wasn’t a real head."
Getty Images
The photographer Tyler Shields is also defending the photo as an artistic statement and an expression of his First Amendment right to free speech. "There’s the famous quote, 'I don’t agree with you, but I’ll defend your right to say it,'” Shields told Entertainment Weekly. "I might not agree with [Trump], she definitely doesn’t agree with him, but I’ll defend my right to be able to say whatever I want until I die."
Getty Images
"I still love Kathy Griffin," Jamie Foxx told Entertainment Tonight, when asked about the backlash. "Don't kill the comedian! There's a lot of people out here doing really bad things and every time a comedian says anything, says something about peanuts, [people say], 'You're peanut-shaming!' [A comedian] says something about dolphins [people say], 'Oh my god, you're a dolphin-shamer.' We're the comics, we're entertainers, we don't mean any harm."
Getty Images
Former CNN star Larry King took a similar stance, saying the image was “in terrible taste,” but ultimately expressing sympathy for Griffin as a friend. “She’s my friend. She made a mistake. She apologized. Let it go," King told TMZ, adding that he would not have fired Griffin had he been running CNN.
Getty Images
‘Inside Amy Schumer’ writer Mike Lawrence came down on Griffin for apologizing for the stunt in a post on Facebook. “You know what you did and should own it. It wasn’t a riff onstage or a joke you had done once or twice," he wrote. "You wanted a reaction and got it. So live in it. Don’t apologize."
Getty Images
Rosie O’Donnell tweeted about Griffin’s stunt by saying that she “didn’t find it funny at all.” But the longtime Trump critic has also retweeted a number of messages from users who say that similar actions — including people burning or lynching effigies of Barack Obama — have not been met with the same level of outrage.
Getty Images
Civil rights attorney Lisa Bloom announced on Thursday that she will represent Griffin, and will host a press conference on Friday to "explain the true motivation behind the image, and respond to the bullying from the Trump family she has endured."
Getty Images
1 of 9
Griffin has been criticized from both the left and the right, but a few people are standing by her
Kathy Griffin's photo of herself posing with the severed head of Donald Trump has been met with widespread condemnation and already cost the comedian her gig at CNN. But a few individuals are still publicly standing by Griffin, even if they don't entirely approve of her actions.
Getty Images
