Melissa Rivers to co-host ‘Fashion Police’

LOS ANGELES — After a year of turmoil, E! is hoping Melissa Rivers can bail out “Fashion Police.”

On Wednesday, the cable network announced that Rivers, who is also an executive producer of the series, will join Giuliana Rancic and Brad Goreski as one of the program’s co-hosts. The show will return Aug. 31.

“Fashion Police,” which skewers celebrity fashion, has struggled to regain its footing since main host Joan Rivers died in August. The program took a four-month hiatus before returning in time for the Golden Globes in January with Kathy Griffin in the elder Rivers’ position.

But then everything went haywire. In February, Rancic joked that she thought the singer Zendaya’s dreadlocks must smell like “patchouli oil” and “weed.” Then co-host Kelly Osbourne publicly voiced her disappointment with Rancic and quit the show. In March, Griffin was a goner.

Melissa Rivers, who oversaw all that controversy, admitted in April that the show had rushed back into production.

“But it was awards season. It made such logical sense,” she said. “But it was this weird validation that we really were a family. The matriarch died. And what happens when the head of a family dies? The sisters fight, and someone tries to marry in — and that went really well.”