Melissa Rivers on Her Glorious Return to the Emmys Carpet, Remembering Her Mom Joan and Why ‘It’s Been Really Hard’ to Watch ‘Hacks’ — SkimNews
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- Melissa Rivers will return to the red carpet for the first time in 20 years as part of "CNN & Variety Red Carpet Live: TV's Biggest Night," streaming live at 5 p.m. ET on Monday, Sept. 14 on CNN.com/Watch and the CNN app, alongside Variety co-president Ramin Setoodeh and CNN correspondent Elizabeth Wagmeister.
- Rivers said she agreed to the gig on impulse over Labor Day weekend after initially being invited to appear via Zoom — and then realized she hadn't covered a red carpet in two decades.
- Rivers told Variety she wants to restore "fun" and "lightness" to carpet coverage, positioning herself as "the shallow end of the pool" after the tone shifted serious and political in the years since she and her late mother Joan Rivers left E! and TV Guide Channel coverage, which ended in 2007.
- Rivers confirmed she has not watched "Hacks" despite Jean Smart's Emmy-nominated performance as Deborah Vance — she said when someone showed her the pilot, she "was not thrilled by how I was portrayed," though she praised the show's mother-daughter evolution as a "true theme."
- Rivers predicted her mother would lean into the Ozempic era, saying Joan would declare, "Thank God — everybody's caught up! And admitting it!" — a sharp reversal from the days when, Rivers recalled, "we would be looking behind people's ears for fresh scars."
- Melissa Rivers continued hosting E!'s "Fashion Police" solo after Joan Rivers's 2014 death, staying on until the show's final episode in 2017.
Why it matters: Rivers is betting that audiences have grown tired of solemn, statement-driven carpet coverage and want the lighter celebrity-fashion commentary she and her mother pioneered — a re-entry made possible by CNN and Variety partnering on a new pre-show format that gives her a platform without reviving E!'s "Fashion Police."
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