Katt Williams Scorches the Earth and Every Comedian on It
Vulture Magazine
By Craig Jenkins and Hershal Pandya
Remember The Last Dance? The must-watch documentary event of early 2020 in which Michael Jordan, reflecting on his final NBA championship campaign and legacy, captivated the world by finally cutting loose on his former teammates, rivals, and the headlines that dogged him throughout his career? Well, imagine if The Last Dance consisted solely of one long interview, switched focus from basketball to stand-up, and swapped out Jordan for comedy legend Katt Williams.
On January 3, the internet was stopped in its tracks by precisely this as Williams sat down for a nearly three-hour tour-de-force interview with ESPN First Take correspondent Shannon Sharpe on his podcast, Club Shay Shay. “The reason I had to come is because you’ve made a safe place for the truth to be told,” Williams said at the top of the interview. “And I have watched all of these lowbrow comedians come here and disrespect you in your face and tell you straight-up lies.” Was he there to “set the record straight”? Sharpe asked in reply. Apparently so.
Over the course of the interview, Williams makes outrageous claims (he said Harvey Weinstein offered to “suck my penis in front of all my people at my agency”); airs personal grievances with a half-dozen or so comedians, such as Cedric the Entertainer (who allegedly stole one of his jokes) and Michael Blackson (a comedian who doesn’t get “booed enough”); goes deep on the production of Friday After Next; and dismisses rumors about his personal life. He may not always be the most reliable narrator, and there are moments — like when he refers to Kim Kardashian as a “whore” or fixates too much on which male comedians have worn dresses in movies — that will raise eyebrows. But this is very much a strap-in-and-enjoy-the-ride situation.
Before the interview even finished premiering on YouTube, it began going viral on Twitter, inspiring memes, jokes, and fact-checking; provoking responses from some of Williams’s targets; sparking discourse about how young Black comedians rarely get the exposure these older Black comedians continue to get; and much more. To get the full effect, one must watch the podcast episode in full, but below is a brief selection of its various highlights, flagrant accusations, and possible libel.
On Kevin Hart: “In 15 years in Hollywood, no one in Hollywood has a memory of a sold-out Kevin Hart show, there being a line for him, ever getting a standing ovation at any comedy club. He already had his deals when he got here. Have we heard of a comedian that came to L.A., and in his first year in L.A., he had his own sitcom on network television and had his own film called Soul Plane that he was leading? No. We’ve never heard of that before that person or since that person. What do you think a plant is? Maybe people don’t understand the definitions of these words. He just did his documentary with Chris Rock, where he shows you that his whole upbringing in comedy was on the East Coast. So how, simultaneously, was he here in Los Angeles doing the same thing? It didn’t happen.
For a five-year period, every single movie that Kevin Hart did was a movie that had been on my desk. All I had said was ‘Can we take some of this Stepin Fetchit shit out and then I can do it? It don’t need to be overtly homosexual ’cause I’m not homosexual. It doesn’t need that to be funny, right?’ And me saying that and them going, ‘Oh yeah, no problem,’ and then going to give it to this other guy and having him doing it just like it was and acting like I’m a bad person ’cause I keep standing on my standard.
They tell you there’s no gatekeepers, but we keep seeing the same person open the gate. Didn’t Kevin let Tiffany [Haddish] in? … What do you mean ain’t no gatekeepers? There’s a hundred gates out here. Every one I seen got a keeper.” (On January 4, Hart responded to Williams on Twitter in a post promoting his upcoming Netflix movie Lift. “Gotta get that anger up outcha champ,” he wrote. “It’s honestly sad.”)
