Joan Rivers Once Considered Suicide But Here's What Stopped Her
<img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5408ec1c6bb3f7e539785039-1200-600/joan-rivers-edgar-rosenberg-1.jpg" border="0" alt="joan rivers edgar rosenberg">
In 1987, Joan Rivers' manager and husband of 22 years, Edgar Rosenberg, committed suicide after Fox fired them both following drama on "The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers."<span style="line-height: 1.5em;"></span>
Eight months later, Joan considered suicide herself.
In what would be her final big interview, the 81-year-old comedian opened up to The Daily Beast's Tim Teeman in July about the darkest period of her life and how she came out of it:
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/5408ec086bb3f74442785031-1200-924/joan-rivers-melissa-rivers-funeral-2.jpg" border="0" alt="Joan Rivers Melissa Rivers funeral">"Melissa wasn't talking to me, my career was in the toilet, I'd lost my Vegas contracts, I'd been fired from Fox [where she had a talk show]. Carson and NBC [she had appeared on the Tonight Show for years] had put out such bad publicity about me. I was a pariah. I wasn't invited anywhere. I was a non-person. At one point I thought, 'What's the point? This is stupid.'
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">What saved me was my dog jumped into my lap. I thought, "No one will take care of him." It wasn't a friendly dog—only to me. I adored this dog. He was theoretically a Yorkie, his mother cheated. His name was Spike. He was the way you want your dog to be, devoted only to you. I was sitting in this big empty house in Bel Air, with a phone with five extensions which we no longer needed. I had the gun in my lap, and the dog sat on the gun. I lecture on suicide because things turn around. I tell people this is a horrible, awful dark moment, but it will change and you must know it's going to change and you push forward. I look back and think, 'Life is great, life goes on. It changes.'"
<span>"We were all down in the rubble, and he didn't want to dig himself out," Joan says of her husband's suicide, which forced her back to work to earn a living. </span>
<span>"I understand it, and feel terribly sorry for him," she adds, "but I wonder if I'd be sitting here today talking to you if he had not killed himself, if we wouldn't have ended up just a very bitter couple in a house on the hill somewhere."</span>
Read the rest of Joan's insightful interview on The Daily Beast >
<b>See Also:</b>
<ul><li>Tons Of Celebrities Showed Up For Joan Rivers' NYC Funeral </li><li>Joan Rivers Once Considered Suicide But Here's What Stopped Her</li><li>Here's What Joan Rivers Wanted Her Funeral To Be Like</li></ul>
SEE ALSO: Here's An Amazing Scene From 'Louie' In Which Joan Rivers Explains Why She's A Comedian
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