Comedian Kathy Griffin took to Instagram on Sunday to add to the chorus of voices calling out Russell Brand, who’s recently been accused by multiple women of rape and sexual misconduct.
“I’m actually excited about the news getting out about Russell Brand,” Griffin said in her lengthy video. “I mean, it has taken forever to catch up with that sleazebag.”
Griffin clarified that Brand has never harmed her, adding that predators don’t usually try anything with her because they think of her as a “dude.” She did, however, tell a story about a friend of hers who once met Brand at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
“[Brand] was the speaker, and afterwards, she went to shake his hand for a good share, and she said that he just came right up to her, got in her face, and pushed his groin against hers,” Griffin said. “I’m not even going to say he was trying to be funny, because it’s just gross.”
Griffin didn’t share her friend’s name, emphasizing the importance of anonymity in AA.
“It tells you the mindset of so many of these guy comics, and there’s so many more coming,” she added, seemingly alluding to more allegations coming out about other male comedians. “You don’t hear this crap about Dame Judy Dench. You don’t hear that Julianne Moore is sexually assaulting somebody.”
Griffin also pontificated on how female comedians, unlike male comedians, do not have “spotters,” or members of their posse who pick out attractive members of the audience for men to potentially fraternize with after the show.
“You don’t hear this stuff about Amy Schumer or Chelsea Handler,” Griffin said of the Brand allegations. “You know what you hear about my contemporaries? You hear that they’re ‘difficult’ or ‘bossy’ or whatever, and the one I get all the time is ‘expensive.’ But you should know, in the female comedy world, it is constantly an uphill battle.”
Female comedians will never be the top earners, Griffin said, because they still don’t pull in the kinds of audiences that are the most highly valued by “check-signers”: “We still live in a world where if you’re going to see a female comedian and it’s just her show…what bunch of five guys is going to see the Kathy Griffin show, unless they’re homosexuals?”
It’s a comfort, Griffin said, that Brand is finally paying “some kind of price for his ridiculous success.”
Schumer, for her part, praised Griffin’s post, writing in a comment under her video, “I love you. I hope to some day earn as much as the rapists and transphobes in the game. Also, it’s just a part of my story that I have taken jokes from other comics, and I have never in my life, not even once, done that. We have to just fight for ourselves. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. Love you Kath.”
