Bruce Glikas/FilmMagicMourners packed Temple Emanu-El in New York City on Sunday to say their good-byes to the beloved Joan Rivers.
But while dozens of the late comedienne's dear friends were in attendance, one famous face was notably missing. Liza Minnelli, who knew Rivers for years, missed the private funeral service, leading some to wonder why the star of stage and screen didn't show.
Well, it turns out that she was physically not able to attend.
A rep for Minnelli confirmed to E! News that Minnelli was planning on attending the funeral, but has been laid up with a back injury that she'll be undergoing surgery for later this month.
"Joan was my dear friend and I will miss her but I will always remember the laughter and friendship she brought into my life," Minnelli said in a statement following Rivers' still-hard-to-fathom death last Thursday at 81. The relentlessly vibrant entertainer and host of E!'s Fashion Police stopped breathing while undergoing an endoscopic procedure on Aug. 28 and had been put on life support.
"I couldn't go to Joan Rivers' funeral, which I desperately wanted to because I loved her—but I couldn't go because I can't walk. I'm in bed. Going in for surgery," Minnelli told veteran New York Post columnist Cindy Adams, who delivered one of the eulogies on Sunday.
"I broke my lower back," the Cabaret star added. "Remember a few years ago I was in a wheelchair because I had trouble with my spine? They operated on it then. Well, now, again. They'll have to fuse it."
Both she and Rivers appeared in 1984's The Muppets Take Manhattan and the 2008 documentary Every Little Step.
A number of humorous, not-safe-for-temple stories were delivered during the service by the likes of Adams, Howard Stern, Deborah Norville and Margie Stern, whose daughter Ricki Stern directed the 2010 documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.