QVC Jewelry Queen Joan Rivers Gives Us A Peek Behind Her Comedy Mask In Film ‘A Piece of Work’

Joan dishes in her new documentary

This weekend we went to see “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work” during a matinee in Montclair, N.J., at the Clairidge Theater (owned by Jimmy Dolan’s Cablevision). It was just us and one other person the the audience.

Of course, as The Homeshoppingista, we’d hoped that maybe the movie would show Rivers in her role as a very successful jewelry vendor on QVC. Well ladies, if you’re looking for any insidery stuff on the home shopping end, you’re out of luck.

There are a couple of references to Rivers having a QVC stop on her schedule, and it looked like she was wearing her QVC jewelry, but that was about it. She had on a gold disc necklace on a leather cord in one scene of the documentary that had QVC written all over it.

The movie included Rivers’ triuimphant win on Donald Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice.”

Call us naive but we were surprised that Rivers was so blue, profane, in her stand-up routine. Her joke about her darling daughter Melissa being offered $400,000 to appear topless on the cover of “Playboy” really did kind of shock us.

We did laugh out loud at her joke about how wearing a tampon makes Victoria Beckham look fat.

We like Rivers, so we had no ax to grind coming into the theater. We think she came out appearing flawed, like every human being, but also likable and vulnerable in the movie.

Since Rivers seems so thick-skinned, it’s fascinating to hear her talk about being worried about reviews of her acting and her dread of the nasty plastic-surgery jokes that will be lobbed at her during her “Comedy Central” roast. Rivers, looking truly afraid, tells Kathy Griffin, who hosted the Comedy Central Roast, essentially says that although she hates the idea of doing the roast, “It’s a lot of money.”

Again, here’s how stupid we are: We didn’t know Comedy Central pays the people that are skewered on their “roasts.” We thought it was supposed to be an honor, and the roastees would not be paid.

Rivers also talked about her fear of being seen without makeup. We can surely sympathize.

“It’s very scary wheh you see yourself without any makeup,” Rivers said, and that’s how we feel about being seen sans lipgloss and mascara.

Yet the movie’s opening scene is a closeup of Rivers getting her makeup done, so we pretty much see her bare-faced. We guess she faced that fear head-on for the movie.

Rivers also rehashes the story about how her mentor, Johnny Carson, never spoke to her again after she told him she was going to do a late-night show for Fox.

Maybe if she had given him a heads-up BEFORE she took the gig he would have been more understanding, and not felt bushwhacked. Those Scorpios, like Carson, don’t like to feel betrayed. Her Fox show, produced by her husband Edgar, was a disaster. Shortly after the shows demise, Edgar committed suicide.

The doc’s takeaway is that Rivers is a workaholic, isolated and lonely. Yet she is often in the Big Apple tabloids, making the scene with the hoity-toity Park Avenue social crowd. You don’t see any of that in the film. We wish some of it had been.

Joan Rivers Sports One of Her QVC Necklaces On ‘Celebrity Apprentice’

QVC’s veteran jewelry queen, Joan Rivers, made an appearence on “Celebrity Apprentice” Sunday night. And that girl never misses a chance to promote her home shopping wares.

We didn’t see her, but Rivers was wearing one of her new pieces for QVC, a bib necklace that comes in either blue or biege color waves. It sells for $82, and will be on “PM Style” Monday night.