Melissa Rivers Saved Her Mom’s Only Emmy Award Before Her House Burned Down
One of the most awful and underdiscussed aspects of the ongoing Los Angeles wildfires is the sheer audacity of the blaze — roasting Hollywood is Joan Rivers’ job.
As of this morning, the wildfires that continue to devastate Los Angeles County have scorched 36,000 acres, or 56.25 square miles, with more than 10,000 buildings lost to the numerous blazes that began earlier this week. Thousands of homeowners across the most populous county in the country now face the heartbreaking ordeal of rebuilding their lives after the destruction of their residences, with movie stars and average Americans alike sharing their stories about what they have lost.
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Actress and TV host Melissa Rivers, daughter of the late, iconic and acerbic stand-up legend Joan Rivers, is one of the many public figures left unhoused by the fires, but, in a recent talk with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, the younger Rivers revealed that, thanks to her quick thinking, one of her mother’s most prized possessions is safe from destruction.
“I kind of had a mental checklist. I made sure that we got passports, that we got birth certificates, medication, clothing,” Melissa Rivers told Collins about her preparations to evacuate her home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood that this week’s fires rapidly devastated. “I just was out shopping for clothes. It started to hit me that we literally just had what was on our backs.”
“Luckily, my office which is in — was in — my home, (I grabbed) whatever was there,” Rivers continued. “In my personal situation, that’s it, that’s the end of everything that belonged to my family and the history of it. To be 100 percent honest, I grabbed my mom’s Emmy, a photo of my dad and a drawing that my mother had done of me and my son.”
“The most important thing is to have your papers. Have all your IDs, have your passports, have that in one place ready to go,” Rivers advised other Californians who may also be in harm’s way during the devastation, saying of the keepsakes she saved when her own family lost their home, “It’s amazing what you grab. It’s amazing what you take. I went for a drawing of my mother’s rather than a photo, because I know I can find the photos. (But a drawing of hers) I can’t replace.”
“My heart is so broken, not just for myself, but for everyone going through this,” Rivers said of the destruction of her community.
The late Rivers won her lone Emmy in 1990s in the category of Outstanding Talk Show Host, beating out a crowded field that included Daytime TV legend Oprah Winfrey. In her speech, Rivers side-eyed her old mentor-turned-rival Johnny Carson for firing and blacklisting her, adding thanks “to my daughter Melissa because the last two years have been very difficult” and remembering the advice from her late husband during her career downturn that, “You can turn things around.”
Thankfully, Melissa has her mother’s resilience — and her mother’s Emmy.
