Kathy Griffin tells off Julie Chen in Twitter tirade: 'F*** you and your misogynistic husband'
Kathy Griffin took aim at ousted CBS CEO Leslie Moonves and his wife, Julie Chen, in a revealing Twitter thread on Sunday evening.
The comedian’s tweets came after news broke that Moonves would be stepping down from his position amid new sexual misconduct allegations — and Griffin said she heard secondhand that Chen had been more complicit than Griffin had initially believed.
A) I have a story to tell and it’s related to the whole Les Moonves situation. Normally, I hate when women are blamed for their husband’s misconduct…it happens all the time. And after the first allegations against Leslie were revealed, I hoped his wife wouldn’t face blowback.
— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) September 9, 2018
C) She never got back to me…but I figured she was just swamped with the scandal and didn’t think anything of it. Then, several days ago I learned of how Julie has treated people from folks that I know personally.
— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) September 9, 2018
Griffin doesn’t go into detail about The Talk co-host’s alleged behavior but shared a clip from 2017 of Chen bashing Janet Jackson on her daytime talk show. Last week, a report from HuffPost claimed that Moonves wanted to destroy Jackson’s career after the 2004 Super Bowl debacle, an agenda Griffin believes Chen bolstered 13 years later.
E) And then this clip of Julie speaking so smugly about Janet Jackson in 2017 really set me off. Julie knew her husband helped to destroy Janet’s career and this is how she speaks? https://t.co/peruGy3AZz
— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) September 9, 2018
Griffin then shared a screenshot of a direct message she sent to Chen on Twitter last Thursday. It said: “You know what Julie? I’ve changed my mind. F*** you and your misogynistic husband. You two deserve each other. Oh, and tell him Kathy f****** Griffin said hello. Bye bitch.”
Chen has yet to respond publicly to Griffin, who was just getting started.
“Make no mistake, Leslie still has a ton of power and I’m going to pay for this dearly. And that’s what he and his cohorts in this town do to women in the business,” she wrote on Twitter. “I feel like my career is finally headed towards a good place again, but by tweeting all this I am risking being blacklisted further. But I can’t stay quiet about the kind of s*** that goes down in this industry.”
Griffin revealed that in 2014, she asked her agents if she could have a meeting at CBS about replacing Craig Ferguson as the host of The Late Late Show. “My agents told me that Leslie wasn’t going to consider any women for the spot. Yes, they met with a few women, but they weren’t actually going to hire a woman is what I was told,” she wrote on Twitter. “Welcome to reality!” (James Corden got the gig. Griffin did say that she likes the Late Late Show host)
She also referred to the “inappropriate” email she received from a CBS board member following her Donald Trump photo shoot scandal.
M) And again there are so many areas of concern in this business that don’t have to do with sexual misconduct. After the Trump photo I got this insanely inappropriate email from a CBS board member I have known named Arnie Kopelson. pic.twitter.com/zk1ATLx3zE
— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) September 9, 2018
Griffin believes that holding those in the industry accountable — like Moonves and Chen — is her “responsibility that comes with privilege.”
“I really hope my women colleagues who financially secure will join me in speaking out against women like Julie and the indignities imposed on his by men in this business,” she concluded. “It’s not going to change until we start talking.”
After six women accused Moonves of misconduct in July, Chen immediately released a statement in support of her husband. The Big Brother host announced Monday she would be taking “a few days off” from The Talk to be with family in the wake of the scandal.
— Julie Chen (@JulieChen) July 27, 2018
You can read Griffin’s whole thread here.
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