Kathy Griffin hopes 'you will be laughing' at her suicide attempt story on new tour: 'It's so over-the-top'

Griffin tells EW her "My Life on the PTSD-List" tour turns pain into comedy — plus, she reflects on being "thrown away like a piece of trash" by industry pals.

Kathy Griffin has been through hell — enough so that she jokes (at least, we hope) she's willing to employ... uh... alternative methods to jump-start her own industry vitality and put butts in seats for My Life on the PTSD-List, her first stand-up comedy tour in six years.

"You don’t want to know what I would do to sell tickets," the 63-year-old tells Entertainment Weekly. "I don’t want to use the term 'f--- a donkey,' but, whatever it takes. My hustle game has never been stronger."

It's a remarkable sign of resilience for the comedy staple, who, decades into her industry reign as an Emmy-winning reality star and record-holding performer with the most number of televised stand-up specials in history, had to reroute her career in 2017, after losing countless gigs (and celebrity friendships) following a federal investigation into that infamous photo of herself holding a bloodied mask styled to look like then-President Donald Trump. Now, just like she taught herself to cope after a resulting suicide attempt, a 72-hour psychiatric hold, pill addiction, divorce, the deaths of her mother and sister, lung cancer that led to a partial organ removal, post-traumatic stress disorder, and more on the other side of the the fiery gates of the netherworld, she's ready to make you laugh about it all.

"Are you f---ing flaunting your two lungs in my face right now? You two-lunged people are so cocky," Griffin quips at the top of our phone call, signaling a renewed sense of humor and an ability to find levity amid her misfortunes — of which there have been many.

It should be noted that, unlike in videos she shared throughout her cancer journey, Griffin speaks at a bold volume (which sometimes approaches a state of blissful booming) during our chat. Gone is the soft squeakiness in her voice fans got used to during her cancer treatments, which left her with a "permanently dead" vocal cord. In its place is a new tone that she says a medical team assembled by her friend, the pop star Sia, helped her achieve, and it's a sound that serves as a metaphor for Griffin herself. Her voice signals familiarity for fans, albeit one that's been altered with just enough cracks to remind those listening of the path that led her here in the first place.

Just like she did on her beloved docuseries My Life on the D-List, Griffin will address it all on the PTSD-List tour. She promises the show includes "lots of good celebrity stuff" that her followers expect, after she built a career on telling jokes about being banned from The View for telling a risqué, behind-the-scenes story about Barbara Walters and Astroglide, or that time Céline Dion barked for her like a dog while backstage at a Vegas show when Griffin nervously petted her hair — or that controversial 2005 joke she made at the Golden Globes about child actress Dakota Fanning going to rehab. This time, though, Griffin might've "walked into my own act" after revealing how she copes with PTSD (including 12-hour panic attacks and "non-stop vomiting and dry-heaving").

"I’m going to make it funny. I make fun of my remedies. I have a whole team of people trying to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again," Griffin reveals, adding that she now regularly practices Kundalini yoga, breathwork, and daily affirmations she still chuckles at. "I’ll go look in a mirror and say s--- like, 'You’re going to be okay today, Kathy. It’s me, Kathy, talking to you, Kathy. You’re going to be okay.' If anybody ever walked in, they’d have me committed on another 5150 psych hold. I have to admit, after me making fun of celebrities being on 5150 psych holds, I’m a little bit excited that I’m now in the company of Britney and Kanye."

Related: Green Day singer Billie Joe Armstrong holds Donald Trump mask at concert, Kathy Griffin reacts: 'I see you'

She stresses that she'll "bring it back to a nice, light, fluffy" place, too. For example, "the method in which I tried to take my life" she teases.

"Because it’s so over-the-top that I can now laugh about it. I give the audience a big tee-up, like, 'Don’t worry guys, I’m not going to just lay it on you, we’re going to work up to it, but I’m going to tell you how I tried to take my life.' I’m not making fun of it, but you will be laughing," says Griffin.

Surprisingly, one thing she won't touch on the road (unless, she says, he makes major headlines the same day), is Trump.

"He’s actually not mentioned in this show," Griffin explains of the material she used on the first 40 dates of the tour earlier this year. Griffin points out (while also urging people to view her 2019 documentary Kathy Griffin: A Hell of a Story if they want her statement on Trump-related affairs), she and fellow left-leaning people are usually not the ones digging up her past.

"Nobody posts my Trump photo more than Trumpers," she observes. "It’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, it’s Lauren Boebert, It’s Laura Ingraham, Kellyanne Conway, it’s all those psychos [talking about me]."

She fears that, after a Department of Justice probe into the infamous photo landed her on the no-fly list, an Interpol criminal list, and, she says, terrorist watchlists, she's terrified of what a potential second-term Trump presidency might look like for comedians — particularly women, as she doesn't think it's a coincidence that the only comedian ever investigated to that extent by the United States government happens to be female.

"He’s going to pick us off one by one, like bowling pins, and I’m not kidding and I’m not being paranoid. I’m a D-lister, he’s not going to get to me on day one, but he’ll get to me, trust me. He’s got a list. I’ve known this guy for 25 years. He’s so petty that he lives for this. "If he gets re-elected, he’ll go after Jimmy Kimmel, he’ll go after Jon Stewart, all the name ones. He’ll go after Rosie O’Donnell. That’s all he’s going to do all day. He’ll have press conferences about it. He’s so much crazier than he was the first go-round."

For now, Griffin looks forward to hitting the road again throughout September, October, and beyond, including an Oct. 26 headlining slot at Carnegie Hall, and a New Year's Eve show in Chicago — her first holiday gig since being fired (and replaced by her ex-Bravo boss, Andy Cohen) from CNN's annual New Year's Eve broadcast with her former friend, Anderson Cooper, amid fallout from the Trump photo.

On that note, when asked about a potential continuation of My Life on the D-List, why the original iteration of the show ended, and why she hasn't done a Bravo stand-up special since 2013 (years before her fallout with Cohen), Griffin gets uncharacteristically defensive.

"Why doesn’t anyone ask Andy Cohen these questions? Why am I always having to put my feet to the fire? I’m always asked about Anderson and Andy. That was done to me. I don’t have an answer," she stresses, likening it to being "thrown away like a piece of trash" on the street. "Nobody goes up to Anderson and goes, 'How could you have done that to Kathy?' Nobody goes up to Andy and goes, 'Andy, how could you do that to one of the stars of your network?' Nobody asks them, ever."

She maintains that she's received "no apologies" from anyone who "abandoned" her during the Trump scandal, particularly Cohen, with whom she worked at Bravo, the network that launched 18 of her stand-up specials and My Life on the D-List, which recently returned to streaming on Peacock. "All I can do is be honest and say it hurts. It hurts that I’m not doing specials there. It hurts that they never let me do a spinoff with my mom and dad in the early years of the D-List. It hurts that they don’t want to do a D-List 2.0," she admits. "It all hurts, but I’m so thrilled to be back on tour and to be playing Carnegie Hall and the Wiltern, P-Town with the bears, twinks, and the lesbians with their strollers. You're talking to the half most-bitter, half happiest comedian you’ve ever met in your goddamn life." (EW has reached out to representatives for Cohen and Cooper for comment.)

Related: Kathy Griffin crying 'tears of joy' over conviction of former and forever enemy Donald Trump

The work gives her renewed energy, but she's under no delusions that she occupies a unique, unfamiliar position, as she feels it took people seven long years to accept that it "was kind of f---ed up, what happened to Kathy" — and, for the first time in her career, they might actually be applauding her as an individual, versus simply the material she performs on stage.

"I want to think my comedy is good enough for people to stand, but I’m not going to lie, they’re standing because they also f---ing know what happened to me in the Department of Justice, they don’t like what happened to me for New Year’s. They know I have one-and-a-half f---ing lungs, they know I was on the goddamn no-fly list, they know that Trump targeted me. I’m not complaining, I’ll take a standing ovation wherever I can get one," she says, later adding: "I still can’t believe I have a manager. I have an agent, I just played 40 cities, I get to tour more. And, after that? Baby, I’m back on the bread line."

That's perhaps where Griffin has thrived the most. She did, after all, knock down her status by labeling herself a D-lister for the reality series that invigorated her career and gave her a platform to enter the next phase of her life. In that journey, it's clear: Griffin has always found a path to salvation — even in the darkest of dark pits.

Tickets for Griffin's My Life on the PTSD-List tour are available for purchase now.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.