‘Comedy saved me’
Comedienne-actress Tiffany Haddish, who recently stole hearts as host of the MTV Movie & TV awards with some hilarious sketches, talks about her rise from sleeping in her car in LA to becoming one of Hollywood’s brightest new stars
Back before Tiffany Haddish was a movie star, before her performance as Dina in the surprise hit
Girls Trip (2017) put her on Hollywood’s radar, she was working the Los Angeles comedy-club scene and living in her car. When she finally scraped together the money for what she calls “a roach-infested apartment with the broken fridge and cigarette stains in the carpet,” it was a step up for her.
What helped her keep up her faith in her future?
“Someone told me to take a bath,” Haddish said. “Seriously, you sit in the tub in hot water for 45 minutes. Dump a little baking soda in. Then you remember all the pain you’re feeling in your heart. You remember the neglect and rejection of the past. Then you pretend it’s all coming out of your mind and body and pores. It’s just running down the drain.”
“The advice to take that bath changed my world,” she said during an interview at Cinemacon in Las Vegas.
“Now my heart is filled with love, because the water drains the negative and then you fill the rest of you up with joy and fun.”
‘Funniest woman alive’
Since Girls Trip emerged as a smash, the 38-year-old Haddish has had plenty of joy and fun to savour. Vanity Fair has called her “the funniest woman alive.”
Her memoir, The Last Black Unicorn (Gallery, 2017), has ranked as a New York Times best seller. She’s hosted
Saturday Night Live - the first black
female to do so - and the MTV Video Music Awards as well as the MTV Movie and TV Awards. Her major effort has, of course, gone into films: Haddish will star opposite Kevin Hart in Night School, opening in September, and in Tyler Perry’s comedy The
List, playing a woman who, after being released from prison, finds that her sister is in an online relationship that may be less than it seems.
First, though, there’s Uncle Drew, opening nationwide on June 29. Based on a series of Pepsi commercials, it’s set around the Rucker Classic “streetball” basketball tournament in New York’s Harlem. Lil Rel Howery plays Dax, whose slim hopes of ever winning the tournament are boosted when he meets the elderly Uncle Drew (Kyrie Irving), a streetball legend, and coaxes him back onto the court. Haddish plays Jess, Dax’s social-climbing girlfriend.
“She’s not a bad person,” the actress insisted, “but things aren’t going her way, so she calls it quits.”
It’s not a big role, but Haddish wanted to work with Howery, whom she called “the funniest man, who makes me laugh so hard.”
From comedy to films
Things started going her way with a 2008 appearance on HBO’s Def
Comedy Jam and four guest appearances apiece on Chelsea Lately (20112012) and then The Arsenio Hall Show (2013-2014). By then Haddish was also playing small roles in such films as
The Urban Demographic (2005), Meet the Spartans (2008), The Janky Promoters (2009), All Between Us (2010), Keanu (2016) and Mad Families (2017). On television she was seen in Real
Husbands of Hollywood (2013-2014), If Loving You Is Wrong (2014-2015), The Carmichael Show (2015-2017) and
Legends of Chamberlain Heights (20162017), and was cast in Tracy Morgan’s current TBS hit The Last O.G.
Things were humming, in short, but Girls Trip kicked everything to a new level, putting Haddish on the map and at the top of the box office amid a blockbuster-strewn summer, no less.
“When you have four black women starring in a movie that tops the box office,” she said, “then it’s good for everybody.”
It was especially good for Haddish, whose upcoming projects include
Limited Partners, a new comedy that she will executive produce and star in - a one-two punch that she’ll repeat on the upcoming comedy The Temp. Then there’s The Oath, a Thanksgiving comedy about how to celebrate a family holiday in a politically divided America.
Not enough? Don’t worry, there’s more. Haddish will be heard in The
Lego Movie 2: The Second Part and The Secret Life of Pets 2. She’ll join Melissa McCarthy and Elisabeth Moss in The
Kitchen, a comedy about the wives of New York gangsters in Hell’s Kitchen circa 1970. She’s also prepping the animated Tuca & Bertie, in which she’ll voice one of two bird women the other voiced by Ali Wong - who live in the same apartment building.
‘I’m super-grateful’
It’s been a long time coming, but Tiffany Haddish has arrived. “It’s enough to make me cry,” she said. “I’m super-grateful and thankful to everyone who helped me get to this place today. I love everybody for loving me.”
After years of struggling to win occasional work, Haddish is in no mood to slow down now. “I’m constantly writing, interviewing, posting and travelling,” she said. “It’s a very busy life for me, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
As for her personal life, which provides some of her best comedic fodder, Haddish is divorced and likes to talk about finding a new man. “I’m ovulating,” she joked, “which means there’s nothing but opportunity.”
What’s she looking for in a man? “I like dudes with jobs,” she said.
More seriously, Haddish hopes to mentor younger women and girls. “I’m a beautiful woman, but it wasn’t always that way,” she explained.
“I went through my times when I felt ugly. I felt like I wasn’t enough. I just want teach other women and girls to feel like beautiful women. I want to spread the joy and inspire millions.”
Her first lesson: Don’t change. “I’ve been starring in my life for a long time now,” Haddish said. “The only thing that’s changing is, now I’m starring in movies.” Cindy Pearlman, The New York Times Syndicate