Kathy Griffin still has a lot to say, just don’t expect an apology. Sorry, Kid Rock

For years and years, she has taken the stage to the introduction: “The hilarious Kathy Griffin.”

And she promises to live up to that long-standing billing when she plays Royal Oak Music Theatre on Saturday night, even if life these days is a whole lot heavier ― for her, and, yes, the world around her.

“There’s a heaviness now that I have to deal with as a comic,” Griffin, the two-time Emmy winner, told The News during a 15-minute interview earlier in the week. “And so I go out and I start my show with a couple minutes of actually serious talk, because I want the audience to know I’m not in some world where everything’s great. I’m with you guys, and I understand. And then I kind of say to them, ‘OK, now, can I get to the funny?’

“I feel so lucky that I can give people a laughter break.”

Griffin, 65, is not your traditional punch-line-telling comedian.

She’s a bleep-talking storyteller, and these days, she’s got a lot of stories to tell ― including the fallout from the famous Trump decapitated-head photo that landed her in hot water with the Department of Justice (and on the no-fly list), her second divorce, a bout with lung cancer (she has never smoked), an addiction to prescription drugs, and even a suicide attempt. And that’s just from the last eight-and-a-half years.

There’s a good chance she dishes on some of that, if not most of that, when she makes her return to town for the latest stop on her “New Face New Tour” ― mixing all that in, to be sure, with her stand-up’s old, comfy stand-by, all of those absurd celebrity run-ins she’s stored to share over nearly four decades in showbiz.

“And I will be making fun of you guys right to your faces,” said Griffin, who prides herself on no two shows ever being the same. A news junkie (she perked up when we told her Detroit still is a two-paper city), she’s constantly refreshing her feed right up until curtain ― just in case there’s some late-breaking development she needs to work into the act. “Not individually, but I will be making fun of all things Detroit, Michigan, Royal Oak. Don’t think Kid Rock is off the hook. I mean, that video with him and RFK Jr., those two nut jobs doing whatever they’re doing in a gay steam room. … I mean, it writes itself.”

There might be a rap about Eminem, too. Griffin, maybe you remember (or maybe you don’t), was a nurse in the opening of “The Real Slim Shady” video, one of countless credits in a career that’s included hit TV shows, movies, books, red-carpet hosting (and roasting) and, lately, a weekly YouTube show filmed from her couch.

She’s never been known for turning down gigs, not even during the peak of her fame, in the early 2000s, when her hit Bravo reality show, “My Life on The D-List,” rocketed her to borderline A-lister.

“I remember everything about that day,” Griffin (one Grammy) said of filming with Em (15). “The director was Dr. Dre and I walked up to him and I said, ‘Just curious, how did you think of me for this role?’ And he said, ‘Snoop said you were funny.’ And at the time, I just thought that was the funniest convergence of things that happened. And then Marshall Mathers showed up very late. … And the set, remember, this is pre-CGI, so the set was actual like 20-year-old kids that had cut their hair to look like Eminem and dyed it the same color as his. And that was just funny and bizarre to see. You know, maybe 100 young men that looked almost exactly like him. … He just came up me and said, ‘Hi, I’m Marshall,’ and I said, ‘Hi, I’m Kathy, and I’m here because Snoop thinks I’m funny.’

“And that was it. He was very professional. He was very easy to work with. He was game for anything.”

So, too, is Griffin, who cut her teeth in improv, from her days in “The Groundlings.” It’s suited her well most of the time, but it’s also bitten her a time or … OK, a lot of times. One of her favorite and most-utilized words is allegedly, and it’s funny when she drops that in mid-gossip, sometimes even with a wink ― but there’s also often a truthful hint of ass-covering to it. Griffin almost certainly has put some lawyers’ kids through college.

And that was even before the Trump photo scandal, which got her Insta-canceled back in 2017 when she posed holding the president’s bloody, decapitated head (spoiler: it was a mask and ketchup). Griffin claims to have spent millions on legal fees from the bleep-storm that followed ― much of that, gladly, on First Amendment attorneys, and some of that, regrettably, on the lawyer who insisted she had to apologize right away.

Griffin, freaked by an avalanche of show cancellations (poof went her tour, and her prized New Year’s Eve gig with Anderson Cooper on CNN), said sorry. And she’s still saying sorry ― for ever saying sorry at all.

The scarlet letter has become a badge of honor.

“As Jane Fonda told me, it’ll be on my tombstone,” Griffin said. “My only regret is that freaking apology.”

Griffin made forever enemies out of President Trump (whom she previously knew socially, and who once hired her to roast him) and many of his millions of followers. Plenty of heat remains ― she’s got the private-security bills to prove it ― but she’s still eagerly taking on the Epstein files, ICE, and, now, the bombings in Iran.

The tea she’s spilling isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. (Her audiences are, by and large, gays and women, and the straight men dragged there by gays and women.) Back in the day, she boasted about playing the Bible Belt. This tour is mostly blue cities. Even so, her shows will draw the occasional protest.

That’s OK, too. Griffin, who considers herself an activist as much as a comedian these days, can appreciate a good protest ― and has plenty of use for a pathetic one, too.

Hey, she’s always looking for new material ― wherever, however, heavy or not.

“You know, these are different times, and things are ever changing,” said Griffin, who has 21 standup specials to her credit, the first in 1996 and the latest, “My Life on the PTSD List,” in 2025. “I’m leaning in and embracing all the good, the bad ― and the funny.”