What Happened to Kathy Griffin? Where She Is Now in 2026

For two decades, Kathy Griffin was the loudest, most fearless voice in the comedy room — the redhead who would say the thing nobody else dared, name names, and dare you not to laugh. She turned being a “D-list celebrity” into two Emmy wins and a Grammy. Then, in 2017, a single photograph blew it all up, and she effectively vanished from American comedy. Add a lung cancer diagnosis on top of that, and you’d be forgiven for assuming she was done. She’s not. So whatever happened to Kathy Griffin? In 2026, she’s back on a national tour and not apologizing for any of it. Here’s the full story.

01Profile

Full name

Kathleen Mary Griffin

Born

November 4, 1960 (65 years old)

Birthplace

Oak Park, Illinois, USA

Occupation

Comedian, actress, author

Best known for

"Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List" (2005–2010), stand-up specials, awards-show red carpets

Awards

Two Primetime Emmys, one Grammy (Best Comedy Album)

Started out

The Groundlings improv troupe in Los Angeles

If you only know her from the headlines of the last few years, it’s easy to forget just how decorated she is. Two Emmys, a Grammy, and a Guinness World Record for the most televised stand-up specials of any comedian. The “D-list” label was always a bit — she was, in fact, very much on the list.

02The Rise: From the D-List to the A-List

Paying her dues

Griffin grew up outside Chicago and moved to Los Angeles to study acting, where she joined the legendary improv troupe The Groundlings — the same training ground that produced a who’s-who of comedy stars. Through the 1990s she stacked up small, memorable roles on the biggest shows of the era, including “Seinfeld,” “ER,” and “The X-Files,” and landed a regular gig as Brooke Shields’s wisecracking sidekick on the NBC sitcom “Suddenly Susan.”

But Griffin’s real instrument was always the stage. Her stand-up was gossipy, profane, and obsessed with celebrity culture — she made an entire act out of telling tales on the famous people she’d met, a genre she more or less invented and never let go of.

”My Life on the D-List” and the awards

In 2005, Bravo gave Griffin a reality show built around her self-deprecating premise: that she was a striving, second-tier celebrity clawing for relevance. “Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List” ran for six seasons and was a genuine critical hit, earning Emmy nominations every single year of its run. Griffin won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Reality Program in 2007 and again in 2008.

The accolades kept coming. She released six comedy albums, every one of them nominated for a Grammy, and in 2014 she finally won Best Comedy Album for “Calm Down Gurrl” — making her one of a very short list of women ever to take that prize. For years she also co-hosted CNN’s New Year’s Eve broadcast alongside Anderson Cooper, a gig that put her in millions of living rooms at midnight.

By the mid-2010s, Kathy Griffin was about as established as a working comedian gets.

03The Photo That Changed Everything

This is the part of the story that needs to be told carefully, because it is the hinge on which everything else turns.

In May 2017, Griffin posed for a photo, shot by celebrity photographer Tyler Shields, holding up a bloodied prop mask made to resemble the severed head of then-President Donald Trump. When the image went public, the backlash was immediate and enormous. The fallout was swift and severe.

• May 2017The photo is released and sparks national outrage. Griffin posts a video apology, saying "I sincerely apologize."
• 2017CNN drops her from its New Year's Eve special, and multiple stand-up shows are canceled. She is briefly placed on a no-fly list and questioned in a federal investigation.
• 2018On "The View," Griffin reverses course, saying "I take the apology back."
• 2017–2023By her own account, she goes years without steady work — she has said "I didn't work for seven years" — and estimates she permanently lost about a third of her fanbase.

According to her own later interviews and mainstream reporting, the cost was staggering. She faced a Secret Service investigation, was placed under scrutiny that disrupted her ability to travel and tour, and received death threats. Professionally, the bottom fell out: the steady stream of TV bookings, the New Year’s broadcast, the comfortable touring career — much of it evaporated.

Griffin has been candid about how hard that period was. She told CBS News that the experience nearly broke her, and in subsequent interviews she has framed the ordeal as the defining trauma of her career. At the same time, she has been equally clear that she’s no longer sorry. In recent years she has said she regrets apologizing for the photo and considers herself to have been ahead of her time. Whatever your politics, it’s a rare thing to watch a public figure refuse the script of contrition that usually follows a scandal like this — and Griffin, characteristically, refused it.

04Surviving Cancer in Her Own Words

As if a career collapse weren’t enough, Griffin faced a much more personal crisis. Everything in this section comes directly from what she has chosen to share publicly.

In August 2021, Griffin announced on her social media accounts that she had been diagnosed with lung cancer. In her own words: “I have cancer. I’m about to go into surgery to have half of my left lung removed. Yes, I have lung cancer, even though I’ve never smoked!” She described it as stage one and contained, and said her doctors were optimistic she could avoid chemotherapy or radiation.

“Please stay up to date on your medical checkups. It’ll save your life.” — Kathy Griffin, in her August 2021 cancer announcement

She used the announcement to urge her followers to keep current on medical screenings, and she has since spoken openly about the long recovery, including subsequent surgery on her vocal cords that temporarily affected her voice. For a stand-up comedian, whose entire instrument is her voice and her timing, that was no small thing — and her willingness to talk about it candidly, rather than hide it, became part of how she rebuilt her public connection with audiences.

The diagnosis arrived during the same stretch when her professional life was at its lowest. To come through both — the cancer and the career wreckage — and end up back onstage is the heart of why people are paying attention to her again.

05What She Is Doing Now

The “New Face, New Tour” comeback

In late 2025, Griffin announced her return to stand-up with a national tour she cheekily titled “New Face, New Tour” — a nod to recent and very public changes in her appearance, which she has addressed openly and with humor. The tour kicked off in Las Vegas in November 2025 and rolled through theaters across the United States and Canada into 2026, with a spring leg that wrapped in Honolulu in May 2026 and additional fall 2026 dates announced for cities including San Francisco, Boston, New York, Washington, Atlanta, and more.

The format is classic Griffin: a solo headliner, no opening act, roughly an hour and a half of celebrity satire, sharp political commentary, and the kind of storytelling that made her famous. She has promised that each night will be a little different, often opening with local material.

No more apologizing

Griffin has made it abundantly clear that the new act is unfiltered. She told People that “the gloves are off,” adding with typical bluntness: “I’ve been touring so long that I really think if you buy a ticket to my show, you can’t act like you don’t know I’m going to curse like crazy. I’m going to say inappropriate things.”

“The gloves are off.” — Kathy Griffin to People, on her 2025–2026 tour

In a November 2025 interview, she reiterated that she’s done walking anything back — including the 2017 photo — and described herself as fully reengaged with the political comedy that got her into trouble in the first place. Whether audiences agree with her or not, she is unmistakably herself again.

Personal life

Griffin has also been open about her personal life in this period. In 2025 she finalized a divorce, and she has spoken publicly about new relationships and about cutting off contact with people she described as harmful. She continues to be active on social media, where the same combative, comedic voice that built her career remains very much intact.

06Summary

Kathy Griffin’s story is one of the more dramatic falls — and one of the gutsier returns — in modern comedy. She lost years of work over a single image, beat lung cancer in the middle of it all, and chose to come back without the apology tour most people would have expected.

You don’t have to share her politics to recognize the throughline here: Kathy Griffin built her whole act on saying the thing other people wouldn’t, and after everything she’s been through, she’s still doing exactly that. Love her or not, the woman from the D-list is back on the marquee — and on her own terms.