Comedian Kathy Griffin stunned fans after apparently hard-launching a new relationship on social media – with a man she said was 43 years her junior.
The Suddenly Susan and My Life on the D-List star, 65, posted a photo of herself hand-in-hand with the unidentified younger man on her Instagram today, captioned simply: “He’s 22. Have at it, internet.”
As the internet unleashed a dramatic reaction to the apparent age-gap romance, Griffin later took to Instagram again with a statement declaring it was also a “social media sociological experiment”.
“No, I’m not dating this 22-year-old,” she wrote, in part.
“He was helping me with security during my trip to NYC. But… what if I were? The reactions were fascinating.”
Griffin went on to write that the reaction on Instagram were mostly positive, while Threads had produced a lot more “s**t-shaming”, accusations of “grooming”, and claims that it was “gross”.
“Older men have been dating younger women since the beginning of time… Just ask Luke Wilson, 54, who just had a beautiful baby with his 24-year-old girlfriend,” she pointed out.
“… or Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, or Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart, Jay-Z and Beyonce… some of the most long-lasting beautiful relationships in my beloved (though ageist and sexist) industry.”
Griffin concluded: “Relax… just a little harmless fun.”
Meanwhile, it was not the first time in recent weeks Griffin has hard-launched a relationship – real or fake – on social media, without actually identifying the man that she’s dating.
Back in mid-May, she posted a photo of herself with an unknown man who looked closer to her in age, writing: “We’re insta official. Deal with it.”
That past photo has since been deleted, suggesting Griffin and her May boyfriend might have already gone their separate ways.
Griffin has been open in the past about dating men who are much younger than her. In December last year, she wrote an article revealing that she had fallen for a 23-year-old following her 2025 split from ex-husband Randy Bick, who at 47 was almost two decades younger than Griffin himself.
“I accidentally fell in love with a 23-year-old,” Griffin confessed in an article she wrote for The Cut.
“Because of his age, he didn’t have the usual sexism, misogyny, and biases that guys my age tend to have. He seemed to see me. I know that sounds really corny. Oh God, it sounds so lame! But I felt really comfortable with him, and I felt very content just hanging out.”
But she revealed that the reality of their age-gap meant it was a short-lived romance.
“I knew he was too young when he told me he never wanted to have kids and that he could be with me forever. And I was like: ‘You don’t know that. You’re 23. You have no idea,’ “ she wrote.
“So I had to set that dove free.”
