Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Melissa Rivers Speaks Out on Joan Rivers Oscars Snub

Getty Images

Fans were outraged that Joan Rivers was left out of the Oscars’ “In Memoriam” segment — but her daughter seems to be taking the high road.

In a statement posted to Joan Rivers’ official Facebook page, Melissa Rivers basically told everyone to please, take a chill pill:

“It would have been nice, especially considering the impact she had on the awards season, but Cooper and I have been overwhelmed with support and love over my mom’s passing and we choose to focus on that.”

Rivers paid tribute to her mom — who pioneered the iconic question: “Who are you wearing?” — during her Oscars red carpet coverage on E!

The Academy kind-of-not-really apologized for the oversight, telling The Hollywood Reporter: “After the ceremony was over, a rep for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences told BuzzFeed News: “Joan Rivers is among the many worthy artists and filmmakers we were unfortunately unable to feature in the ‘In Memoriam’ segment of this year’s Oscar show. She is, however, included in our ‘In Memoriam’ gallery on Oscar.com.”

Rivers wasn’t the only one snubbed — Jewish actress Elaine Stritch was also left out. Not cool, Oscars.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.