Joan Rivers at TCA: Red carpet not fun anymore

Joan and Melissa Rivers didn’t agree on much during their TCA press tour panel promoting their upcoming WEtv reality show Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best? But one topic in which they were in perfect alignment on was the state of red carpets during Hollywood award shows.

“It’s gotten too controlled,” Melissa told the nation’s TV critics. “There are a few sort of paradigms shifts would change it significantly. Unfortunately, it would be such an expensive undertaking and E! is doing fine with Ryan [Seacrest] and Julianne [Hough].”

Joan, naturally, was a bit more blunt.

“It’s not fun,” she says. “Five years ago, you could say ‘Julia Roberts, I hate your dress,’ and she’d laugh. But now these publicists will kill you and say, ‘You won’t get the next six people!'”

Joan and Melissa, you’ll recall, were booted from covering the red carpet live on E! In Joan Knows Best?, the senior Rivers moves to California to live with her daughter and hijinks (and shouting) ensue.

One critic asks about a scene in which the duo fight about whether Joan has had too much plastic surgery.

“No such thing!” Joan says.

“And I disagree,” Melissa counters.

“Because you’re not my age.”

J&M had the first TCA panel on Friday morning after Thursday afternoon’s session concluded with Oprah Winfrey’s epic monologuing. Joan had a joke ready: “I wish we could have started this half an hour earlier so we could have seen the end of Oprah.”