Melissa Rivers to be new co-host of “Fashion Police”

Joan Rivers has got to be smiling down from comedy heaven today.

Her daughter, Melissa Rivers, has been named as a new co-host of the beleaguered Fashion Police, the show put on the television map by her late mother.

Rivers will be joined by returning co-hosts Giuliana Rancic and Brad Goreski when the E! Network show returns to the air on August 31 when the panel will critique fashion from the MTV Video Music Awards.

‘As an executive producer since the beginning, Melissa helped shape Fashion Police into an iconic TV series that couples fashion with comedy,’ said Jeff Olde, Executive Vice President, Programming and Development for E!.

Rivers said in a statement: ‘I’m very excited to be given the opportunity to continue to work with my E! and ‘Fashion Police’ family.’

The show had stopped production last fall when Joan Rivers unexpectedly died shortly after the Emmy Awards edition aired. Production resumed in January with a Golden Globes edition with new panelists Kathy Griffin and Goreski joining returnees Rancic and Kelly Osbourne.

But the show imploded during its Academy Awards episode.

Rancic got into hot water when a joke written for her about actress Zendaya’s dreadlocks. She said they made the Disney star look as if she smelled ‘like patchouli oil’ or ‘weed.’

Rancic apologized on the air and it was later revealed that editing took the joke out of context and make Rancic look even worse. Osbourne, who had been outraged by the Zendaya incident, quit the show after five years as a panelist.

At an event in New York in May, Rivers spoke with Hoda Kotb about the tumult: ‘It was a very, very difficult time, I had a lot of conversations with everybody involved … It really shows that we were a family. We went back too fast, and when the matriarch died the sisters started fighting.’

It had been difficult for Rivers to watch because Fashion Police had been a major success that she shared with her mother.

“I felt like ‘Fashion Police’ was this little jewel, and it was the last piece I had of my mother and I working together. I felt like all these people were so out of control. They took the last thing I had and smashed it. I felt like I was Humpty Dumpty and I was on my knees gluing it back together.’

Now she will be doing so in front of the camera as well as behind the scenes.