Melissa Rivers says an unnamed “big actress” once confronted her in person over comments made on “Fashion Police,” the E! show she co-hosted from 2015 to 2017 alongside her late mother, Joan Rivers.
“I’ve had a big actress confront me at a party,” Rivers, 58, said Tuesday on the “McBride Rewind” podcast. “I [was] just like, ‘I didn’t like your dress.'” She did not name the actress.
Rivers said she and her mother kept what she called a “painful list” of celebrities they had offended over the years. She singled out one star who came after her about a critique, only to return improved.
“The next show or the next year, she showed up with a new stylist, looking great, different hair color and had clearly had a facelift,” Rivers said.
Rivers also described a tense flight from Los Angeles to New York after an awards show, where she and Joan found themselves sitting near an actress whose outfit they had just criticized on air.
“We had just filmed ‘Fashion Police’ because we would film really early in the morning,” she said. “An actress got on the plane that we knew we had said that we didn’t like [her outfit]. We knew her. Hugs, chatting. She and my mom were reading the same book, and we’re sitting there going, ‘Oh s—t tonight she’s going to find out what we said about her dress.'”
Rivers has never backed away from the show’s approach, including defending Giuliana Rancic’s widely criticized 2015 remarks about Zendaya. She called “Fashion Police” a program “built for entertainment” and “built to be funny.”
“Don’t tell me that you don’t do the same thing talking to your friends. Tell me one person who wasn’t sitting on their couch or looking through pictures and all the time on Instagram and things like that. Now you go like, ‘Ew, I don’t like that.’ You’ll say it to your friends,” Rivers said.
“Everyone sits — to this day — and watches the shows and goes, ‘Oh my god, that’s amazing’ or ‘Oh my god, that’s horrible,'” she added. “The difference was we did it out loud.”
Nearly a decade after “Fashion Police” ended, Rivers keeps offering her opinions, including sharing Met Gala reactions with Page Six Radio last year. Earlier this month she told the outlet her “biggest fashion ick” is miniskirts, saying discomfort in ill-fitting clothes stands out to her more than anything else.
