Joan Rivers Cuts Short CNN Interview, Walks Out (Video)

After apparently becoming incensed with a CNN anchor, Joan Rivers cut short a taped nationally televised interview.

The Fashion Police personality walked off of a CNN Newsroom interview with host Fredricka Whitfield after the conversation turned to her boundaries when telling jokes.

“This whole interview is becoming a defensive interview,” Rivers said, also protesting that Whitfield’s line of questioning was mainly “negative.” 

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“You are not the one to interview a person who does humor, sorry,” she added, before walking off the set. 

Whitfield later stated that she wondered if Rivers walking out of the interview was a stunt. “Off camera, [Rivers] kept her microphone on as she continued to talk and dropped some rather unflattering four-letter words,” the CNN host said. 

Rivers had appeared on the network to promote her new book Diary of a Mad Diva, which had just hit store shelves on July 1. She has recently been criticized for comments caught on camera earlier this week where she described President Obama as gay and first lady Michelle Obama as “a transgender.”

Following the televised CNN airing on Saturday, Rivers, through her publicist, clarified to The Hollywood Reporter why she stormed off the set.

“I do not do, and never have done, PR ‘stunts,’ ” Rivers said in a statement to THR. “The CNN interviewer was a news reporter and not an entertainment reporter. She did not seem to understand we were talking about a comedy book and not the transcripts from the Nuremberg Trial. Every question was an accusatory one designed to put me on the defensive. She seemed to miss the point that “Diary of a Mad Diva” is simply a very funny book and as Winston Churchill said, if you can make one person laugh, even for a minute, it’s like giving them a little vacation.”