Joan Rivers' 90th Birthday Tribute & Her Love for Ryan Gosling

Joan Rivers was ne'er 1 to support her opinions to herself, astir thing oregon anyone—or what they were wearing.

And that wasn't conscionable for show. The pioneering comedienne, known for her incomparable work ethic and large bosom arsenic overmuch arsenic for the well-polished barbs that were her banal successful trade, was arsenic effusive with her feelings off-stage arsenic on, the invitation to speech open-ended.

All of which has provided large solace for Melissa Rivers in the years since her mother's abrupt decease successful September 2014 aft suffering complications during a medical procedure. Even astatine 81, Joan had ne'er slowed down agelong capable for fans to see her mortality, fto unsocial ponder an amusement scenery without her untamable perspective.

"What saved maine and got maine done the past 8 years was, thing was near unsaid," Melissa told E! News' Francesca Amiker successful an exclusive Zoom interview up of what would person been Joan's 90th day connected June 8. ("She would not person been happy," her girl deadpanned of the milestone.) "I'm truthful fortunate that I knew she loved me. And she knew that I knew—and she knew I loved her."

The ma to 22-year-old son Cooper Endicott quipped that she dubbed her ain household "Camp Run Amok" years ago, but the done enactment since her ain puerility has been a family-first attack to parenting. Her mother and father Edgar Rosenberg, who died successful 1987, provided "a wide explanation of enactment beingness and location life," Melissa said, "or arsenic I similar to telephone it the separation of religion and state."

And even though they were specified celebrated personalities, she added, "who we were connected TV oregon successful the nationalist oculus was vastly different, and is inactive vastly different, than who we are successful what I telephone our existent lives."

But chatting all the clip astir everything was their norm—if her ma was here, she said, they'd beryllium bingeing Succession and The Great and Joan would inactive beryllium "giving Amal a tally for George's heart" and fangirling over Ryans Gosling and Reynolds—and Melissa is thankful that what turned out to beryllium their last speech was truthful routine.

"It was specified a mother-daughter conversation," she recalled of the late-night telephone telephone that, excessively bushed to have a big discussion, she considered not picking up. And arsenic "horrible" arsenic the ensuing week was erstwhile Joan was hospitalized, "I americium truthful fortunate for that infinitesimal wherever I tin look backmost and accidental we had a wholly normal—touched connected work, touched connected Cooper, touched connected gossip—conversation. Typical, the trifecta."

Losing and subsequently mourning her mother, however, was what anyone who's been done a akin acquisition mightiness recognize.

"Everyone expects personage grief to beryllium different," Melissa observed. "And it's not. That's thing I learned. Maybe there's much of an penetration of privacy, but that doesn't marque the emotions immoderate antithetic for anyone, ever." 

In summation to their close personal bond, they were predominant originative collaborators, joining forces for everything from E!'s reddish carpet coverage and Fashion Police to their We tv series, Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best?, which ran for 4 seasons.

"We couldn't person done what we did [on E!] without each other," Melissa said. "It was a precise peculiar lightning-in-a-bottle thing." And connected their reality show, "I deliberation radical truly saw however overmuch we could work each other. I could acceptable her up and past she could sound it retired of the park."

And yet Melissa didn't see following in her mother's footsteps erstwhile it came to a vocation successful comedy.

"No 1 successful their close caput would ever effort and unrecorded up to her," explained the writer and big of Melissa Rivers' Group Text Podcast. "Everyone's like, 'Don't you privation to bash stand-up? You're truthful funny.' I'm like, 'No!' I wouldn't privation to enactment myself successful that situation."

Even without trying to spell down that road, "there's capable comparisons," Melissa continued. And it bothered her parent that "I ne'er got credit. She got each the recognition and I seldom got any, and that was precise frustrating to her, due to the fact that we were specified a team." 

Joan was headlining the Lucille Ball Comedy Festival (the I Love Lucy star was calved successful Jamestown) successful 2011 erstwhile the instauration of the multimedia halfway honoring the astir important contributors to the comedic arts was announced, and Melissa was there for the groundbreaking successful 2015. And now, timed to her mom's 90th, she volition beryllium delivering that treasure trove of, yes, hilarity, but besides the grounds of the exacting effort that went into Joan's six-decade career.

"It's so exciting," Melissa said, and the eventual grounds is "really going to beryllium a existent salute to her life." Multiple places inquired astir her mother's papers, she noted, but "this, for me, felt similar the close home" alongside the works of George Carlin, Carl Reiner and truthful galore much icons.

And though to each procreation its comedic voices, Melissa feels that Joan would person kept rolling with the punchlines to this day, her as-long-as-they're-laughing attack to amusement having proved beauteous timeless. 

"I deliberation she would person appreciated the conversations" astir the authorities of comedy and whether some topics person go taboo, Melissa mused, but eventually her reliably brazen mother would person conscionable sighed, rolled her eyes and cracked immoderate much jokes.

"She ever said, 'Making idiosyncratic laughter is similar giving them a mini-vacation,'" recalled the person who was person to Joan than anybody. "Everyone needs to instrumentality a heavy enactment and retrieve it's good to laugh. But I deliberation astatine this point, she would conscionable beryllium like, 'Oh god, everybody, just...' I can't accidental it."

But if she did, Melissa added, "it wouldn't beryllium the archetypal clip 1 of america had said 'f--k' connected E!"