Mad Diva, indeed! Joan Rivers' anger at CNN anchor Fredricka Whitfield over the weekend was not faked for publicity, the Fashion Police host told Access Hollywood on Tuesday, July 8, three days after she made headlines for storming off set during her satellite interview with Whitfield on July 5.
Asked whether the walkout was staged, Rivers said, "Oh, no, no, no! Fifty years in the business, this is the first time I've ever walked off."
"You've gotta understand—when you interview someone, it's not an interrogation. It's not the Nuremberg Trials," she told Billy Bush and Kit Hoover. "And [Fredricka] was going at me, like…'Why do you say this?' and 'Why do you say that?'"
The comedian went on to say that she thinks CNN should have had someone else conduct the Q&A. "I'm sorry for her, because I think she should not have been doing a comedy interview," she explained. "I really did get mad."
"You don't say to Oscar Pistorius, 'When you killed your girlfriend, were you hopping mad?'" she joked. "It was just [that] the questions were just coming out so negatively, and I found myself defending myself. And I thought, 'I'm a comedian!'"
As previously reported, the Diary of a Mad Diva author was talking with Whitfield about her new book when she became agitated over the line of questioning. She walked out when the CNN anchor took aim at her decision to wear fur on the book's cover.
