Joan’s first major feud was dubbed the “Carson mess,” referring to her long-running battle with late “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson. She was banned from the show for 26 years after launching a rival late-night program on Fox.
Joan fell out with fellow E! personality Kim Kardashian, after the outspoken fashion critic called Kim “bulimic” and even bashed her daughter, North. “I’ve never seen a six-month-old so desperately in need of a waxing,” Rivers said of Kim and Kanye West’s first-born.
Rivers was miffed when E! colleague Chelsea Handler tried to claim she was the first woman to do a late-night show. “I said, ‘I guess everyone’s forgotten the [Johnny] Carson show.’ She never spoke to me again,” Rivers revealed. She also said she thought Handler mishandled her departure from E! “I thought she left badly,” Rivers quipped.
One of Rivers’ recent feuds was with Lena Dunham after she called the “Girls” star the “first fat girl naked on the television.” Rivers even went as far as to tell Howard Stern that if she had to see Dunham’s “ass, boobs or tattoos” again, she wanted HBO charged with crimes against humanity.
“American Hustle” star Jennifer Lawrence criticized Rivers’ E! show “Fashion Police” for promoting unhealthy body images, an attack that Joan didn’t appreciate. She told the New York Post: “I love that she’s telling everyone how wrong it is to worry about retouching and body image, and meanwhile, she has been touched up more than a choir boy at the Vatican. Look at her posters. She doesn’t have a nose, she has two holes,” Rivers said.
“Twilight” star Kristen Stewart was so upset by Rivers calling her a “one trick pony” who got her career by “being able to juggle a director’s balls,” that she considered suing her, according to Joan. “She obviously didn’t read our disclaimer, which says it’s a comedy book.”
After calling her a “narcissistic loser,” Rivers didn’t hold back against Tyra Banks, saying: “Tyra didn’t make Time’s [Most Influential] List, but she said it was just an honor to be nominated, which she wasn’t. Such a liar — she kept saying to me, ‘I take classes at Harvard. I take classes at Harvard.’ Unless those are spinning classes, I’m not buying it.”
The “Celebrity Apprentice” contestant’s co-stars took a verbal beating when Joan told Annie Duke and Brande Roderick respectively: “You are a piece of crap, and you are a stupid blonde. You have been so manipulated, you are not going to win.” Rivers went on to say to poker player Duke, “Your people give money with blood on it, I have met your people in Vegas for 40 years and none of them have last names. You’re a poker player, you are beyond white trash.”
