Kathy Griffin hypes ‘performance’ from Rihanna on CNN; goes after Poppy Harlow

Just ten minutes into CNN’s annual New Year’s Eve broadcast, and Kathy Griffin managed to potentially shock and offend pretty much every single producer standing in New York with her and Anderson Cooper. By and large, the comedienne absolutely killed it in kicking off the show, save for maybe one joke that crossed a line.

The best bit that Kathy had going early on in the show was her promising that random guests were going to stop by and perform exclusively for CNN. Her lineup included a Justin Bieber and Rihanna duet, Elizabeth Taylor (who is of course dead) appearing alongside General David Petraeus while singing “I Dreamed a Dream” from “Les Miserables.” She also mocked Anderson for being completely out of touch with reality, which included him not knowing that Kim Kardashian was pregnant and not knowing a single song performed by One Direction.

As for the controversial remark that irked producers, we can basically sum it up as this: she joked at one point that CNN journalist Poppy Harlow works at Scores, which is a famous strip club in the New York City area. Almost immediately after she started to go down this train of thought, Griffin found herself the target of a few glares from the show’s producers, which led her to question why she is allowed to mock the late Elizabeth Taylor and MSNBC but not one of the members of the CNN family.

The two moved on from the Harlow comments soon enough, and eventually went on to roam around Times Square in order to meet Ryan Seacrest. Did it happen? That’s a work in progress for now, but they did end up meeting Carson Daly and having a chat with him about how the “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” host is a robot who is secretly living in St. Barts.

If you want to see more of Kathy and Anderson (including some past highlights), be sure to visit the link here.

Update: We also have a video below of the awkward meeting of Psy for these two, especially for Anderson (who did not even know it was MC Hammer with him).

Photo: CNN