Kathy Griffin, Valley designer star in the Hollywood freeloader game
If rumored Valley house hunter Britney Spears ever plops down a few mil on a local abode, comic Kathy Griffin has good news for the singer with plummeting status: Phoenix is a fab place for those on the D-list.
Griffin's own subdued star status is the subject she loves to laugh at on her new reality show: Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, which features her lackluster adventures in Hollywood haggling, or How to Get Things for Free. Recently on the show, she's been overhauling the décor of her 7,500-square-foot home in the Hollywood hills with the help of Phoenix designer Mike Nielsen, 45.
Designer Mike Nielsen & D-Lister Kathy Griffin
Nielsen had $100,000 to complete what should be a million-dollar job, he says. So Griffin and Nielsen had a hankering for some A-list gifts, figuring that if Paris-the-heiress Hilton gets free clothes, then why not?
But when time came to get the goods for her palace, Griffin found the good people in the Valley, not LA, easier to charm into discount submission.
"Everybody in LA is really snobby," Griffin says of her dabblings in free furniture. "They were all like, 'We gotta go - on our way to do Renée Zellweger's house.' It was a typical LA experience. If you want to go to a restaurant in LA, you have to be on Desperate Housewives."
So Griffin and Nielsen came to Phoenix, where he has the contacts and she was the most famous guest we've had since Spears shopped Scottsdale and Glen Campbell moved to Malibu, Calif. We basically slobbered all over her.
"Phoenix is great. I love Phoenix," says Griffin. "I love Scottsdale. I love the James Hotel. I have a Kathy Griffin suite. I love -what's that place called? AZ 88. I had never had a cheese crisp, so I went to - oh, can't remember. We went to the State Fair, where I was all about the deep-fried Twinkie. I ate every deep-fried thing - oh, it was heavenly. I ate until I got sick."
Kathy Griffin's sitting area before the Designer Mike touch
Here, Scottsdale shops Bo Concept and Robb & Stucky understood about free TV publicity and helped Griffin with items for her home. There were many trips to Ikea and many cans of spray paint. Nielsen, who also manufactures décor, raided his Phoenix showroom, Nielsen Galleries, knowing that reality TV was about to shine its goodness upon him.
It worked. The house, which boasts five kitchensand a moat in the back yard, has been finished and was featured in In Touch Weekly, the D-lister's InStyle.
"I hate those InStyle snobs," moans Griffin, whose D-list status reared its frizzy head when she tried to get the magazine to feature her modern, chic home. (This is how the celebrity-gifting juggernaut works: Celeb wants something, celeb gets magazine to write about her wearing/sitting/praising said item and celeb gets item for free.)
AFTER Designer Mike.
When Griffin called the magazine, she said, " 'Look, you guys, I know I'm not Courteney Cox. But I'm telling you, the house is better than me. They were like, 'I don't think so.' "
Of course, all of this celebrity whining about having to actually pay for something is stomach-turning, considering those Hollywood paychecks, but Griffin swears everybody else is doing it, so why can't she?
"The A-list does it up right," she says. "I can't give you a name, but a certain extremely well-known actress got her entire house for free. It's a very Hollywood thing to do. Everybody's making fun of me for being cheap, but I'm able to use whatever name I have."
Here's why she feels like it's sort of OK: "The minute I got on TV, my vet bill quadruples. When an electrician comes to the house - I'm not kidding - it's four times more. When I started being on TV, everything got so expensive. That's kind of the way nature balances itself out."
Nielsen's hope for the show is that people see his design brilliance, hire him and buy his products. Take a peek at www.designermike.net. His Phoenix showroom is open to the trade, which means you need a designer to get in.
Griffin is sort of hoping for a Jessica Simpson-style status upgrade; Simpson's reality show rocketed the F-list singer right into Daisy Duke's shorts.
"I was down there with her," jokes Griffin. "We were F-list friends."
"What I would really love is to be on a sitcom again," says Griffin. "Everybody talks about Desperate Housewives - that's one show, and they're all gorgeous. But where's the Roseanne? Where's the real women who are funny? That's where I come in."