Comedian Ms. Pat plays fictional version of herself on new sitcom
By the age of 15, Patricia Williams had been the victim of sexual abuse and given birth to two children. A few years later, she became a drug dealer and got shot twice.
Now Williams, who performs under the stage name Ms. Pat, is one of comedy’s rising stars and headlining a new sitcom that recently debuted.
“I think you need to have some kind of struggle in life to be funny,” Williams said. “I’ve heard comedians complaining that their moms threw out their lunch. Please. Can you go rob a bank so you can write a funny joke?”
In “The Ms. Pat Show,” streaming on BET+, the comic, 49, plays Patricia Carson, a slightly fictionalized version of herself — a convicted felon doing stand-up on the road while her husband manages the household. She returns to their Indiana home often enough to provide the kind of tough love Roseanne Barr was pounding out in the ’90s.
“We only stay married because you have good health care,” she tells her husband in her version of flirting. To teach her kids to be ready for anything, she hurls fruit at them when they least expect it. If there was a swear jar in the kitchen, it’d be overflowing with $100 bills.
But the character is also devoted to her children. In the first episode, she tears into a school principal who’s trying to discipline her daughter — and mistakes Pat for a single mom.
“I don’t do cartwheels or dance. I tell the truth,” Williams said. “I do a bit onstage about my relationship with my granddaughter. After one performance, a woman came up to me and said, ‘Omigod, you really talk to your granddaughter like that?’ Of course. And behind closed doors, so do you. I’m just bold enough to bring it to the stage.”
Williams’ approach may have been a little too real for major platforms.
Fox and Hulu expressed interest in adapting her memoir, “Rabbit: The Autobiography of Ms. Pat,” especially since the executive-producing team includes “Empire” co-creator Lee Daniels and Brian Grazer, who runs Imagine Entertainment with Ron Howard. Both networks ended up passing.
The show’s 10 episodes will stream on BET+, launched two years ago by the Black-centered cable network.
“I learned that Hollywood doesn’t try something until it’s already successful,” Williams said. “In this show, you’ve got a bold mom with a certain background out on the road following her dream while her husband is home chopping vegetables. That’s not normally what they do on sitcoms.”
Williams is familiar with the sound of doors slamming shut.
She toiled away in relative obscurity for more than a decade before landing a spot on NBC’s “Last Comic Standing” in 2015 and putting out her first stand-up album two years later.
“I’m no overnight success,” she said. “I wonder about comics who get famous right away because of some video they did. Are they really ready? You spend the first five years onstage learning how to hold the mike correctly. Then you spend the next five years trying to figure out who you are and why you’re up there.”
If she ever felt herself feeling down about the fate of “The Ms. Pat Show,” Daniels — the Oscar-nominated director of “Precious” — was there to boost her confidence.
“After Hulu shot the pilot, everyone thought we had our foot in the door. Then they didn’t pick it up,” she said.
“Thank God for Lee Daniels. He believed in me. He kept saying, ‘We’re going to find a home for this show.’ I know Hollywood. Hollywood sells dreams, and I’m not in the practice of buying dreams. You just have to hang in there.”