Bill Maher Said Cancer Made Kathy Griffin a ‘Better Person’

Here’s some advice for anyone who ever finds themselves talking to a cancer patient — tread carefully if you plan on finding “silver linings.”

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Kathy Griffin has been fighting Stage 1 lung cancer since August, 2021, but according to Bill Maher, she’s never been more agreeable. Griffin appeared on the most recent episode of Maher’s Club Random podcast wherein she detailed her drama with CNN’s Anderson Cooper and discussed her continuing cancer battle. Griffin and Cooper, former friends, have been on the outs since Griffin drew outrage for posing with a bloodied, prosthetic prop of Donald Trump’s head back in 2017, a stunt that earned her a visit from the Secret Service and caused Cooper to distance himself from the controversial comic.

Six years later, however, Maher says that Griffin is a completely different person from the woman who held a photo shoot with the president’s decapitated head — and it’s all thanks to cancer, says Maher.

“I know you’ve been through all this shit with cancer,” Maher said to Griffin, joking. “I’ve always thought cancer was bad, and I don’t care who’s gonna argue with me. That’s my position.” However, Maher says that Griffin’s health trials have brought the best out of her, continuing, “But I swear to God, I feel like it’s made you a better person.”

Griffin said that her cancer struggles may have made her more sympathetic in the eyes of the public after years of being reviled by many incensed red-hats, saying, “I think people can see me as a human being for the first time in a while. And I’ve noticed a lot of people reaching out to me on social media, saying, ‘I didn’t like this about you. I don’t like that, but I’m wishing you well.’”

Griffin is not out of the woods yet, but she’s not going to be beaten easily, either — unlike Anderson Cooper, she’s not going to bail on herself.