I was watching the roast last night on Comedy Central for Pam Anderson (who gave $200,000 to PETA). What did you think of it?
Well, I had only been to one roast before—those Friar's roasts, which was terribly filthy, but so funny. And I remember we were on the dais, it was me and Dr. Ruth was there and it was fun, it was dirty but fun. But this absolutely appalled me. I didn't see the show when it was aired. I heard they took an hour and 40 minutes out of it. I left as soon as I finished my thing.
Did you realize that you were going to be part of the roasting as well?
Oh yes, I knew that. And I thought whatever I was doing would be funny and dirty, because, you know, I read [sex scenes] from her [Anderson's] book. It's what she wrote. But I had no idea that everything was going to be so raunchy and so ugly. But yesterday I was in Hollywood, I went to see the movie Grizzly Man and some young man came up to me and said, "Oh, I loved you on the roast, you were so wonderful!" and I said, "Oh, please, I'd rather not think about it." And, as a friend of mine said, "who else but Bea Arthur could get a standing ovation saying 'f--k.'"
What got you into animal rights activism?
I've been very active with it all my life—animal rights and problems with foster children. ... There are just so many things you just can't seem to touch, like bullfighting and cockfighting and greyhound racing. And I sometimes wonder how we got this far. Am I bringing you down? As I say, the problem with foster children is at the age of 18 they're dropped. The government doesn't give out money to foster parents after the kids turn 18 and they're totally unschooled in any way they can take care of themselves. Most of them just end up homeless. It's just hideous. Enough. You want to talk about Vegas?