It’s good to be the Queen of Watevra Wan’abi
She grew up in foster care and was several times homeless — but now she’s playing a feisty queen in the Lego movie sequel. Tiffany Haddish tells Julia Molony how dreams sometimes come true
TIFFANY Haddish has many reasons to be cheerful. But chief among them, on the day we meet is that she’s just had one of the best night’s sleep she’s had in years. And it’s all thanks to Salma Hayek.
“I got here a couple of days ago, and I was hanging out with my homegirl Salma Hayek at her house and I got to sleep in a princess bed and the whole room was pink, every time I opened my eyes. I felt like a princess,” she says, her eyes widening with wonder.
It’s more than a bit a of casual name-dropping. For Haddish, who grew up first in poverty and then in foster care, last night represented an experience of against-all-odds wish fulfilment. As a child, she always imagined what it would be like to be a princess. “And then I come here on Monday and I go to Selma’s house and she’s like this could be your room. And I’m like “THIS IS THE VISION I’VE ALWAYS HAD OF WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE A PRINCESS!”
Dressed in a white jumpsuit, her hair styled into ringlets that bounce around her face whenever she laughs, Haddish is a woman who is anything but blase about how much she is savouring every delicious moment of her success.
In the last two decades, she’s been homeless several times. Today, she’s sitting in the suite of a five-star hotel in London, talking about her role in the animated film The Lego Movie 2, in which she joins an A-list cast that includes Chris Pratt and Elizabeth Banks.
Even the character she plays, a shape-shifting, song-belting monarch who goes by the name of Queen Watevra Wan’abi, reads like an ode to the self-determinism that has got her here.
“They called me and said ‘hey are you interested in being the queen?’ I was like, what kind of queen and they said it’s Queen Watevra Wan’abi,” she frowns, puzzling over the syllables, before announcing with a giant grin, “Whatever I wanna be? That’s me in real life! Let’s go!”
In 2017, Haddish published her memoirs, titled The Last Black Unicorn, and the book became a New York Times bestseller. It’s not hard to see why — hers is a triumph-over-adversity tale of rare drama.
It was her mother who taught her to dream big. Her father, a Jewish Eritrean refugee, left the family when she was three. When Haddish was eight years old, her mother was in a serious car accident. She would never fully recover from the injuries which caused her personality to change. She became erratic and abusive and was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia.
“Before my mom had her accident she used to always talk about all the good things she was going to do. She was a big dreamer... “I’m gonna own this many buildings and I’m gonna
have this kind of business,” I always heard her speaking her goals out loud.
“None of those things happened for her. I wish they would have happened for her. So bad. Because I remember how happy she would get talking about those things. She doesn’t do that any more. She doesn’t even remember those things. Her head went through a windshield. That’s gonna knock the dreams right out of your head,”
Not long after the acci- dent, Haddish and her younger siblings were taken into foster care. Then, when she was 15, she was given the option of either going into therapy or trying out the Laugh Factory Comedy Camp, a programme for at risk or underprivileged children.
“When I found comedy, I knew that I loved it. I didn’t know that this would be my career. I just knew that I loved it.”
Her success has been anything but overnight. After many years doing the rounds on standup circuits, she started chasing small roles on television, until in 2017, she got her big break playing the larger-than-life Dina in the hit film Girls’ Trip. “Coming from being homeless a number of times, skinny as hell because I’m hungry as hell to being able to say I’m not hungry no more. I eat well. I can cook meals in my kitchen I’ve had my house for four or five years now. But I was able to pay the house off after three years. All these super-dope things. I’m just really grateful for it.
“I’m always going to make sure I’m never homeless again. But I’m excited. I’m living my best life. I slept in a princess bed the other day!”
After all she’s been through, the slings and arrows life in the spotlight slide off her like she’s made of Teflon. “My mom used to be the meanest person,” she says. “She used to say the meanest things to me... And that was the first person I ever loved. My first love. I still love her more than... well I don’t know if I love her more than my grandma, but she’s right up in there with my grandma. They’re right up in there together. And they’ve both said mean things. “But when people say mean things about me on the internet, when they say mean things in reports or whatever, it don’t bother me. I don’t love them. I don’t even know their name. If anything, I’m flattered, because they are thinking about me. They’re thinking of mean things to say, that takes a lot of energy. That’s a lot of resources you’re using. I’m honoured! I’m actually humbled. Thank you. Thank you for investing this time.”
‘The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part’ is in cinemas now.
‘Before my mom had her accident she used to always talk about all the good things she was going to do...’