She must be joking Comedian Tiffany Haddish tells it like it is

Tiffany Haddish is the rare celebrity who says exactly what’s on her mind. We get in the head of comedy’s new reigning queen.

since Tiffany Haddish’s, 38, breakout role in last year’s Girls Trip, she has voiced a very specific aspiration: to set up a community centre for young people raised in foster care, as she herself was. She imagines building it on two intersecting streets, ‘Tiffany’ and ‘Haddish’. The actress doesn’t have children of her own, but she wants to be “a mentor, a mother, a guide,” she says. Tiffany was born in LA, US, to an American mother and an Eritrean father, who left the family when she was three. When she was eight, her mother was in a car accident that caused a brain injury and eventually a mental illness, turning her violent towards Tiffany, who assumed the role of stand-in parent to her four younger siblings. Five years later, they all ended up in foster care, and Tiffany was separated from the others. When she was 15, a social worker attempted to address behavioural issues – Tiffany hadn’t learnt to read beyond grade-one level and often acted out to distract from that deficiency – by sending her to a comedy camp at the Laugh Factory. If you look hard enough, you can find a video of her from that time, trying on her wild-eyed, slapstick style. One bit, in which she describes assembling up two old TVS – one for sound, one for picture – could fit right into her 2017 comedy

special, She Ready! Even now, just beneath her exuberance, a past defined by poverty and mistreatment still figures into her performances. “The only time I didn’t want to cry was when I was laughing,” she says. “I’ve got all these jokes about my mom, and what I’m joking about, like her abuse and all this stuff, it’s painful.” Years later, Tiffany reconciled with her mother, even setting her up in an apartment where her sister – who received training to take care of people with mental instabilities – lives with her.

Now 38, Tiffany has made plenty of new famous friends over the past year, but she has also kept a long-time crew close. At the Essence Black Women in Hollywood event in March, she thanked one of them, Selena Gomez, in particular. “We met when we were 12, and she never got rid of me.” She remains connected to her siblings as well, while maintaining a certain degree of tough love. “If they’re like, ‘Can I borrow $100 (R1 500)?’ I’m like, ‘You know what? Yeah. I’ll loan you the $100, but if you don’t pay me back before my birthday, you can never ask me for money again.’”

Over the past decade she’s worked steadily, stealing scenes on series like The Carmichael Show, and in KeeganMichael Key and Jordan Peele’s film Keanu. But she became a global sensation with the gut-busting friendship movie Girls Trip, appreciated equally for her performance on her press appearances. On the interview circuit, she dished out some seemingly uncensored stories about taking an unsuspecting Will and Jada Pinkett Smith on a swamp tour she had bought on discount.

“Apparently I run my mouth a lot. My friends will be like, ‘Tiffany, they try and say you’re spilling tea, but you don’t actually talk.’” And to media outlets milking her for celebrity gossip, she offers an advisory: “Sometimes I’m just trying to crack a joke.” Like with one of her recent stories that Drake had stood her up for dinner. “I’m not tripping,” she says. “I think there was going to be a group of us going.” Tiffany is currently single, but says she would like to date. “When somebody strikes my interest, I’ll make the time.” But, she admits, she’d rather focus on fostering children than have her own at the moment. “So many people will say, ‘You need to just have your own baby.’ And I’m like, ‘I already look at myself in the mirror enough.’”

In a cultural climate filled with media-trained celebrities and their perfectly-manicured social media feeds, Tiffany is a “regular degular shmegular person”, as Cardi B, another celebrity whose recent rise can in part be attributed to her refreshingly candid public persona, might say. Jordan Peele, co-creator of Tiffany’s current series The Last OG, agrees, “Tiffany is very truthful and real. That, to me, is the cornerstone of all comedy. People can feel when someone is lying.” For fans, Tiffany’s brand of warm sincerity can feel as affirming as it is entertaining.

In her comedy, and when you speak with her, Tiffany seems genuinely thrilled with the way her career has taken off. She recently splurged on a house of her own – “paid in full, no mortgage!” – where she lives with her two dogs, a pit bull named Dreamer and a Maltese-yorkie mix named Sleeper, and her cat, Tonic, whom she adopted from the set of Keanu. Last month saw her reuniting with Girls Trip director Malcolm D Lee in Night School, in which she plays Kevin Hart’s overworked, yet dedicated, teacher. She manages to sneak into the role her signature phrase (“She ready!”) and dance move (an exaggerated nae-nae). “When somebody all of a sudden gets exponentially more famous, you worry about their ability to keep up with that,” says Jordan. “Tiffany is somebody I’m not worried about.” Fame has crystallised much for Tiffany. “My sister said, ‘Don’t let these Hollywood characters use you.’ I’m like, ‘I’m here to be of service. I’m here to be used,’” she says. “Don’t use me all the way up, because I need some for me, but use me.”

Decades after her father had left, Tiffany re-connected with him. Her ex-husband, a former cop turned private investigator, wanted to impress her in the early days of their relationship, and set out to find Tiffany’s father – which he did. She helped her father secure his green card and began the business of repairing their relationship. After his death last year, she visited Eritrea, the beautiful homeland she had, with some scepticism, heard him describe. There, in between getting to know her family and meeting the president, Isaias Afwerki, she gave herself a baptism of sorts, in the Red Sea. “I got in there. I felt my soul. For the first time, I’m a complete person now. I cried a little bit,” she says, tearing up again at the memory. “And I prayed for my father to forgive me for thinking that he lied to me. I tried to let that feeling wash away and just really start trusting.”

“Tiffany is very truthful and real. That, to me, is the cornerstone of all comedy. People can feel when someone is lying.” – Jordan Peele