Anderson Cooper, Kathy Griffin Discuss Their No-Holds-Barred Relationship

Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin have a special relationship -- one in which he apparently doesn't mind her ribbing him about sex (and didn't even before he came out) and sending him nude selfies.

Cooper and Griffin will display their chemistry on national television again Wednesday, when they host CNN's New Year's Eve Live for the eighth year in a row. As a preview of that event, they recently discussed their partnership in a freewheeling interview with New York Times writer Philip Galanes.

When Galanes asked Cooper if he minded Griffin's sexually charged banter before he came out as gay, Griffin jumped in to say, "That's not fair! Listen, I know two straight guys: my boyfriend and my dad. So, if I talked to Anderson like a gay guy, I didn't mean to out him, I was just talking the way I talk." Cooper then got a chance to speak, saying, "Why would I care what other people say?" Griffin added, "He only cares about what people think he looks like. He's much simpler than you're making it."

In the interview, Cooper also discusses going to Studio 54 as a child with Michael Jackson, how family tragedies shaped his ambitions, and more, while Griffin talks about being ruthlessly bullied in school and claims Cooper is the only person she's ever sexted -- and Cooper shows Galanes the nude self-portrait Griffin set to his smartphone. Read it all here.