The late Joan Rivers is still cracking up the masses via her daughter, Melissa Rivers, who recently shared some hilarious advice the legend bestowed upon her before the star’s 2014 death.
Melissa, 53, claims she had a pretty traditional upbringing with Joan and her father, producer Edgar Rosenberg. This made it even more shocking when her comedian mother advised a newly-divorced Melissa to be as sexually free as she’d like — in her own, colorful words, of course.
“People are always shocked to find that I had a very traditional childhood where it was always very clear that what [my parents] did for a living was completely separate,” she said on the “Divorced Not Dead” podcast. “I always understood that who my mother was on stage was not who my mother was, and my father was very grounding.
“So I think because of that very traditional upbringing, when I was dating — after I got married, it caught me by surprise when my mom was like, ‘You need to be much sluttier.’ She’s like, ‘You need to put it out there.’ I’m like, ‘Oh my god, really?'”
“My mother was like, ‘Enjoy it while you’re young, show it up,'” she added.
The influential stand-up also told Melissa to embrace heels, cleavage and mini-skirts
“Once I [became] an adult, my mom’s like, ‘Girl, shorten that skirt, push up those boobs, put on some lifts,” Melissa claims.
Last summer, Melissa announced that Joan’s estate has plans to release hours of new material from the late comic at some point during 2021.
“While hundreds of hours of my mother on tape sounds great to her fans, to my therapist it sounds like another beach house,” Melissa said at the time. “Thankfully, mom was meticulous about saving everything, and some of her best routines, collected over literally decades, are going to soon be available. For that we really can be grateful.”
Rivers died in 2014 at the age of 81 after experiencing serious complications while undergoing a routine throat procedure.