Melissa Rivers reflects on what she lost in the Los Angeles wildfires—none of which was her late mother Joan Rivers‘ heirlooms.
“The jokes and the main archive pieces, luckily, about two and a half, three months ago, they were picked up by National Comedy Central,” Melissa, 56, told people in an interview published on Sunday, January 19.
Melissa noted that the card file contained over 65,000 of Joan’s original jokes from the beginning of her career in the 1950s. until her death in 2014. (Joan died at age 81 after suffering complications during outpatient throat surgery.)
Melissa added that Joan’s “nice things,” meaning her jewelry, were in a safe deposit box in a bank vault. Joan’s wardrobe was auctioned off for charity.
Melissa, who was one of tens of thousands of locals forced to evacuate Los Angeles due to the ongoing wildfires, he said CNN on Jan. 8 that she grabbed Joan’s Emmy and a photo of her father, Edgar Rosenbergbefore leaving home.
“This is the end of everything that belonged to my family and its history,” Melissa told the news organization at the time. “I grabbed my mom’s Emmy, a photo of my dad, and a drawing my mom had done of me and my son. … I went for a drawing of her, not a photo. I know I can find the pictures, but I can’t replace a drawing.’
Besides the items she took before she left home, Melissa also lost other mementos of her parents.
“I had her bathrobe and my dad’s,” she said people. “Everyone’s like, ‘What about her wardrobe?’ But I kind of lost the only three things of theirs that I kept in my house because they reminded me so much of them.
Melissa Rivers knows that “Fashion Police” should have been on TV when her mom Joan Rivers was in charge — but she doesn’t think it would work in today’s social climate. “(You) can’t do this anymore,” Melissa, 56, told Us Weekly exclusively while promoting the upcoming November event Dead Funny: A Living Tribute to Joan Rivers Benefiting (…)
Melissa explained that she and her fiancé, Steve Mitchelllost “everything,” adding, “When we say we’ve lost everything, you can’t get it until you see the video. It’s not just my life, it’s my son Cooper’s life as well. We were both just kids and all that went away.”
Melissa, who welcomed her son Cooper, 24, p John Endicott in the year 2000 said her life is in three LL Bean bags. Melissa noted that she and her family are doing “as well as can be expected.”
“We’re all doing the best we can,” she said. “Cooper is made of the same tough stuff I am. And we all lean on each other and get through it.”
Melissa has now found temporary housing and is embracing her inherited sense of humor as she and her family consider what’s next. “That’s my superpower,” she said to laughs at the worst moments, like Joan. “I am my parents’ daughter.”
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