Comedienne Kathy Griffin came forward with a blistering account of attorney Lisa Bloom’s services during the aftermath of her photo shoot that featured a prop severed head of President Donald Trump.
Griffin stirred controversy when she participated in a June photo shoot featuring a prop bloody head resembling the president, and she subsequently brought in Bloom to deal with the fallout, which included losing her gig as co-host of CNN’s New Year’s Eve program. Griffin found Bloom’s work dissatisfactory and accused her of "fame-whoring" in a recent interview with the Daily Beast.
The Los Angeles-based attorney most recently grabbed headlines after she represented – and days later, didn't represent – Harvey Weinstein following the release of stories detailing numerous allegations of sexual harassment and abuse against the Hollywood film mogul.
Grifffin blamed Bloom for a series of disastrous events, including a widely mocked press conference in which Griffin sobbed and said Trump "broke" her. Griffin posted a video on Thursday in which Bloom and her role in "fake feminism" and "Weinstein culture," a reference to Bloom’s former client.
"If you want my Lisa Bloom statement, anybody, OK, here it is. Yes, I got Bloomed," Griffin said. "Yes, I did not have a good experience with her. Yes, I feel she and her husband exacerbated my personal situation."
"I don’t think Lisa Bloom should be shot, like people want to shoot me," Griffin added. "So there’s my fucking statement."
Griffin said the messages she is receiving from some fellow women in Hollywood are "no different than the hate I get online from the Bernie Bros and the Trumpers."
"This is not the way feminism was supposed to go," she said. "This is not progress."
Griffin has been disappointed by the lack of support she has received since the Trump photo shoot. In response to criticism from her former co-host Anderson Cooper, she called the gay CNN host and child of Gloria Vanderbilt, "The Spineless Heiress," a quip she credits to her gay friends.
Griffin described the handling of the press conference in which she said Trump "broke" her as a series of failures by Bloom. She claimed she felt in danger from a Gateway Pundit writer while Bloom prevented her from having her security guard present, and then she felt trapped in a room by the attorney’s husband while Bloom gave interviews outside.
"Lisa’s husband was physically holding the door closed, so we were in there, and Lisa was outside doing interviews in the hallway fame-whoring which we didn’t know at the time," Griffin said. "We knew that the press conference was a disaster the minute it was over."
"We said, ‘Where’s Lisa, she’s supposed to be in here?’ and her husband was holding the door, and I was probably crying," Griffin said. "I remember Bill, my boyfriend, and Alan walked over to her husband and they were like ‘what the fuck is going on?’ Nobody in my posse is violent or anything, but they said, take your hand off the door."
"That press conference exacerbated my situation greatly," Griffin said. "I didn’t know I was going to her office, and that I would be under a fucking banner that said ‘Lisabloom.com,’ and that she would hand me a coffee cup that said ‘Lisabloom.com.’ It was one of the worst days of my life."
Griffin also complained about a heated conference call that occurred hours after her press conference fell into disarray. The comedienne accused Bloom of shouting and said she advocated a series of joint press appearances, notably on "Good Morning America" the next week.
"Lisa said, ‘Kathy, I don’t like it that you’re the only other woman on this call and you’re not speaking up for me,’" Griffin said. "And I’m like, ‘Are you fucking kidding me? After everything I’ve been through, you’re gonna try to play the fucking feminist card with me? Are you fucking nuts? It doesn’t work that way. I don’t have your back on this one at all.’"
Griffin said Bloom’s services were a waste, tweeting on Sunday that the attorney should stop trying to get into contact with her.
Dear @LisaBloom pls stop calling me. If you’d like to refund me the tens of thousands of $$ I wasted on your services maybe I’ll talk to you
— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) October 22, 2017
Bloom contradicts Griffin’s account of the events in various ways. She told the Daily Beast that the infamous press conference was collectively planned and only took a turn for the worst when the comedienne herself elected to go off-script.
"Her [Griffin’s] entire team (entertainment lawyer, criminal lawyer, and several others) approved in advance the statements she and I were going to make," Bloom said. "Yet Kathy then during the press conference spontaneously chose to put aside the notes we had worked so hard on together."
Bloom entreated Griffin to show more solidarity with her as a woman instead of taking the side of her other, male lawyers.
"Kathy has now made a video about how women should stand together, and yet she’s attacked me, a lifetime women’s rights attorney, and not the rest of her team, all of whom were men," Bloom said.