NEW YORK — Late last week, various stylists to the stars were frantically pulling together their clients’ “look” for Sunday’s Oscars. And as they did so, there are two people they should probably thank for their jobs: Joan and Melissa Rivers.

In 1996, the mother-daughter duo pioneered award-show red carpet coverage, hosting “Live From the Red Carpet” for E! Entertainment Television.

After leaving E! in 2004, they returned in 2010 with “Fashion Police.” Joan leads a panel with Giuliana Rancic, Kelly Osbourne and stylist George Kotsiopoulos as they critique celebrity style choices. Melissa is a co-executive producer and occasional panelist.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Joan and Melissa Rivers talked about how they’re happy to be off the red carpet, celebrities’ lack of fashion risks and their own fashion mistakes.

AP: Would you agree that many people watch awards shows for the fashion?

Joan Rivers: I think that’s what has made ‘Fashion Police’ so popular. It’s the only show that I think tells the truth. Everyone stands on the red carpet and says, ‘You’re so beautiful.’ You want to say, ‘Are you crazy? She looks terrible.’

Melissa Rivers: The way it’s said (on ‘Fashion Police’) is better than anybody can say it. We say it in a very entertaining way.

AP: Set the scene for how you watch stars arrive on a red carpet. Do you have notepads?

Melissa Rivers: Notepads for pages and pages and pages of notes. You look for trends. I always have a tally sheet going of specific things I see. At the SAG Awards, everybody had the same hairdo. Then you go back and you sort of analyze it and figure out what we’re gonna put in the show the next day.

AP: Now that everyone has a stylist, is it harder to find fashion misses?

Joan Rivers: In the beginning, they would come dressed on their own. Even some of them were making their dresses. Kim Basinger designed her dress one year. Joanne Woodward once made her dress. You want to go, ‘Why? You’re not in a trailer park. You don’t have to.’ Now they all have their own stylists and look like they can go to war.

Melissa Rivers: They’re in uniform.

Joan Rivers: One shoulder, slit to the leg, hair on one side. They can line right up.

Melissa Rivers: What’s sad is they lose their personalities, and what you want to show is your own personal fashion sense and your personality. A lot of them don’t know. They’re too scared to (do it).

AP: Are you happy that you’re no longer on the red carpet doing interviews?

Joan Rivers: Yes. It’s my place to make the viewer out there have fun and share my opinion. And you know what? If I’m not invited to the party, I wasn’t invited anyhow.

AP: Do you ever look at your own fashion and say, ‘What was I thinking?’

Joan and Melissa Rivers: Yes.

Joan Rivers: Fashion should be fun. If for one night you look like an idiot, it’s OK. Don’t take it so seriously Victoria Beckham. Calm down, it’s a stupid dress. There are a couple pictures that show up and I go, ‘How could I walk out of the house?’ But you did and you survive.

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NEW YORK (AP) – Right now, various stylists to the stars are frantically pulling together their clients’ “look” for Sunday’s Oscars. And as they do so, there are two people they should probably thank for their jobs: Joan and Melissa Rivers.

In 1996, the mother-daughter duo pioneered award-show red carpet coverage, hosting “Live From the Red Carpet” for E! Entertainment Television.

After leaving E! in 2004, they returned in 2010 with “Fashion Police.” Joan leads a panel with Giuliana Rancic, Kelly Osbourne and stylist George Kotsiopoulos as they critique celebrity style choices. Melissa is a co-executive producer and occasional panelist.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Joan and Melissa Rivers talked about how they’re happy to be off the red carpet, celebrities’ lack of fashion risks and their own fashion mistakes.

AP: Would you agree that many people watch awards shows for the fashion?

Joan Rivers: I think that’s what has made ‘Fashion Police’ so popular. It’s the only show that I think tells the truth. Everyone stands on the red carpet and says, ‘You’re so beautiful.’ You want to say, ‘Are you crazy? She looks terrible.’

Melissa Rivers: The way it’s said (on ‘Fashion Police’) is better than anybody can say it. We say it in a very entertaining way.

AP: Set the scene for how you watch stars arrive on a red carpet. Do you have notepads?

Melissa Rivers: Notepads for pages and pages and pages of notes. You look for trends. I always have a tally sheet going of specific things I see. At the SAG Awards, everybody had the same hairdo. Then you go back and you sort of analyze it and figure out what we’re gonna put in the show the next day.

AP: Is there anyone you feel you can’t criticize?

Joan Rivers: If (E!) has somebody who is a huge star on their network. They’ll never say ‘don’t,’ but they’ll say, ‘Do you really have to say that?’ And then it’s our decision. And then it falls on us. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Depends on your mood.

AP: What should we look for on this year’s Oscar red carpet?

Melissa Rivers: The two ‘it girls’ Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence. … They’ve both had one hit and one miss. Both missed at the (Golden) Globes and hit at the SAG Awards. Those two are the ones every designer wants to dress and the ones everyone’s waiting for.

AP: Now that everyone has a stylist, is it harder to find fashion misses?

Joan Rivers: In the beginning, they would come dressed on their own. Even some of them were making their dresses. Kim Basinger designed her dress one year. Joanne Woodward once made her dress. You want to go, ‘Why? You’re not in a trailer park. You don’t have to.’ Now they all have their own stylists and look like they can go to war.

Melissa Rivers: They’re in uniform.

Joan Rivers: One shoulder, slit to the leg, hair on one side. They can line right up.

Melissa Rivers: What’s sad is they lose their personalities and what you want to show is your own personal fashion sense and your personality. A lot of them don’t know. They’re too scared to (do it).

Joan Rivers: I even like Florence Welch because as crazy as she looks … she goes with her own idea of what’s good-looking. Thank God.

AP: What did you think of Adele’s outfit at the Grammy Awards?

Joan Rivers: She looked like she was sitting on a teapot.

Melissa Rivers: On the runway it was long, it was amazing. I didn’t love it short.

AP: Are you happy that you’re no longer on the red carpet doing interviews?

Joan Rivers: Yes. It’s my place to make the viewer out there have fun and share my opinion. And you know what? If I’m not invited to the party, I wasn’t invited anyhow.

AP: Have you started to recognize the work of certain stylists?

Melissa Rivers: Certain stylists have a very distinct look.

AP: Do you ever look at your own fashion and say, ‘What was I thinking?’

Joan and Melissa Rivers: Yes.

Joan Rivers: Fashion should be fun. If for one night you look like an idiot, it’s OK. Don’t take it so seriously Victoria Beckham. Calm down, it’s a stupid dress. There are a couple pictures that show up and I go, ‘How could I walk out of the house?’ But you did and you survive.

After creating and hosting Live from the Red Carpet for the E! network (1996-2004), Joan returned to anchor their popular and successful franchise Fashion Police, hosting both its hour-long weekly broadcasts and its awards-season specials. From hot new trends to red-carpet risks, Joan hilariously takes viewers through a recap of the week’s celebrity fashion and ultimately decides who sizzled and who fizzled.

Joan also dominates the world of reality television with her daughter, Melissa Rivers, in their weekly hit series on WE tv, Joan and Melissa: Joan Knows Best? – now in its third season. This inimitable duo addresses the question that has plagued daughters since the beginning of time: Does mother really know best?

Joan is also a vastly accomplished author, and her 11th book, I Hate Everyone.…Starting With Me, was published by the Penguin Group in June 2012. It instantly became a New York Times Bestseller. Prior to that, she wrote the other bestselling titles, Men Are Stupid and They Like Big Boobs: A Woman’s Guide to Beauty Through Plastic Surgery and Murder at the Academy Awards: A Red Carpet Murder Mystery, both published by Simon & Schuster.

In 2012, Joan recorded her live concert performance at the Arcada Theatre in St. Charles, Illinois for a comedy special entitled Don’t Start with Me, which premiered on Showtime in November and was released on DVD and iTunes in January 2013.

Joan continues to dazzle live audiences in Atlantic City, Las Vegas and across the country. In October 2012 she returned to the United Kingdom and Ireland for a sold-out concert tour – her first since 2005. She also continues to perform in Canada, the Caribbean, and Australia.

In 2011, Joan became the first “GoDaddy.Co Girl,” hilariously representing the successful web-hosting company, GoDaddy.com. The commercial premiered during Super Bowl XLV to millions of viewers nationwide.

The 2010 critically acclaimed, no-holds-barred documentary, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work premiered during the Sundance Film Festival and was released in theaters nationwide that summer. The film is currently available on DVD and Netflix.

In 2009, Joan starred in NBC’s hit reality-TV competition series The Celebrity Apprentice, along with Melissa Rivers. Joan emerged as the second season’s winner and has returned as a Boardroom Advisor on subsequent seasons of the show, including the 2013 All-Star Edition.

Also in 2009, the iconic funny woman was honored during The Comedy Central Roast of Joan Rivers. That year as well marked the debut of her TV Land reality show, How’d You Get So Rich?, which, for two seasons, took a candid look at the extravagant lifestyles of fabulously rich American entrepreneurs and innovators.

No stranger to the world of animation, in addition to lending her unique voice to Shrek 2 and Spaceballs: The Animated Series, Joan received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination in 2009 for her portrayal of “Bubbe” on PBS’ award-winning animated children’s series Arthur. In 2011, she voiced Annie Dubinsky, the hard-talking agent of Krusty the Klown on The Simpsons.

Joan Rivers is a true pioneer: She created her own brand of irreverent, unconventional comedy and forged her own remarkable rise to stardom in the entertainment world. Enduring tawdry clubs, Borscht Belt showrooms, and grimy Greenwich Village cabarets, her career skyrocketed in 1968 when she appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Within three years she was hosting That Show with Joan Rivers, one of the first syndicated daytime talk shows on the air. She soon made television history as the permanent guest host of The Tonight Show and helped launch the nascent Fox Network in 1986 with The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers. In 1989, Joan triumphantly returned to daytime TV with The Joan Rivers Show, winning an Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show Host.

Since she was a child, Joan has loved the theatre. In 1986, she starred in Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound, and in 1994 co-wrote and starred in Sally Marr and her Escorts, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. Joan continues to explore personal theatrical endeavors, most recently with The Joan Rivers Theatre Project, which she co-wrote and starred in. The show ran for a limited workshop engagement at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco before opening to rave reviews as Joan Rivers: A Work in Progress by a Life in Progress at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. She enjoyed six sold-out weeks in L.A., followed by another sold-out run in 2008 at Scotland’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, as well as a successful three weeks at London’s Leicester Square Theatre.

Joan’s unique brand of humor, along with her compassion and tenacity, has enabled her to triumph over personal tragedy and reach extraordinary professional success. These traits, along with her love of fine art, antiques, and vintage jewelry, have driven Joan to keep her finger on the pulse of the latest trends, and she is widely considered America’s most visible, accessible, and authoritative fashion spokesperson. In 1990, Joan launched the Joan Rivers Classics Collection of fashion jewelry, apparel and accessories on QVC, and was honored with an ACE Award for her work by the Accessories Council. Joan’s collection was an instant, enormous success and remains so today not only in the U.S. but on QVC in the U.K. and on The Shopping Channel in Canada.

Despite being constantly in motion, Joan continues to work tirelessly on behalf of charities that are close to her heart: God’s Love We Deliver, The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and Guide Dogs for the Blind. She also dedicates her time to the National Osteoporosis Foundation and Wounded Warriors, among other remarkable organizations.

From her trademark question, Can we talk?, to her red-carpet creation, Who are you wearing?, the woman who asks all the right questions gets the answers America – and the world – want to hear.

Melissa Rivers

Melissa Rivers gasps and utters “tragic” when asked about advice for Mindy McCready’s two young sons, Zander, 6, and Zayne, 10 months, who lost their mom to suicide this week.

The reality star, whose show Joan and Melissa: Joan Knows Best? premieres Saturday at 9 p.m. ET on WeTV, knows all too well what it’s like to lose a parent in that way: Her dad, Edgar Rosenberg, who was married to mom Joan Rivers, took his own life in 1987, when she was 18.

“Her sons are so young, so I don’t know how you get any child through the loss of a parent at that age,” the Fashion Police executive producer, 45, tells me Wednesday while promoting Blockbuster Awards Night Movie League, an interactive website designed to host, manage and facilitate participation in a fantasy league celebrating the 2013 Oscars.

“I do know for myself, the biggest healing moment for me was when I was able to admit that I was really mad at my dad, and what he did was sh****. But feeling that way doesn’t mean that I didn’t love him.”

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For Melissa, therapy was a huge help.

“You’ve got to go to grief counseling,” she says. “This is not a path you can walk without help because there is so much anger. The biggest moment for me is when I realized that I could be angry, and I could be pissed at his decision, but that doesn’t mean that I loved him any less or respected him any less. Being able to separate that is a big moment.”

She chooses to remember the good times.

“My dad was great,” she says. “He was my protector. I was daddy’s girl.”

Still, her father’s demise has had a lasting impact.

“For sure, I have abandonment issues. I think anyone who goes through a suicide has abandonment issues. Someone’s choosing to not be there. Especially when it’s a parent.”

In fact, she continues to struggle with feelings of abandonment today.

“Somewhere in your head, you always wonder ‘was it me? Why wasn’t I enough?’ You have to play out all the ‘what ifs?’ and ‘if onlies,’ and then you must put them to rest, and not let it define who you are.”

She adds, “For years, I felt like there was a big giant ‘S’ walking with me on my chest. I felt very stigmatized by it.”

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In 2010, the most recent year statistics are available, 38,364 people tragically chose to check out of this world. That’s 105 people per day; one person, every 13.7 minutes.

How would she stop someone from ending it all?

“What’s so ironic is I had a friend from high school who killed herself, and my father’s the one that told me — and then didn’t heed his own advice — that ‘suicide is a permanent answer to a temporary problem.’”

With her dad gone, Melissa shares an unbreakable bond with mom Joan.

What’s the best advice the comedienne has given her?

“No matter what you’re going through, this too shall pass,” she says. “Everyone goes through stuff. You scratch the surface of anyone, and they have a story. Everybody has stuff they have to deal with, and stuff that isn’t so pleasant. You have to remember that whatever you’re going through, it’s going to pass.”

If Melissa’s dad were here, he would be pleased to see how well his daughter is doing with her TV shows Fashion Police and Joan and Melissa: Joan Knows Best?, plus her gig promoting Blockbuster Awards Night Movie League, an interactive website designed to host, manage and facilitate participation in a fantasy league celebrating the 2013 Oscars, which air Sunday at 7 p.m. ET on ABC.

“It’s the Academy Awards, it’s a huge time of year, and you get to compete online,” she says. “It’s like the world’s biggest Oscar party.”

If you or someone you love are having thoughts of suicide, please get help immediately and prevent another tragedy. Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.