Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
It sometimes takes an actor or actress a frustratingly long time to break out. They can have fans — vocal fans, in fact — and a bunch of really great performances, but the mechanics of fame can be a fickle thing, and it sometimes takes years for a performer to get their due. Sometimes it never happens. We can all be thankful, then, that it appears to be happening with Tiffany Haddish right now.
The R-rated sex comedy Girls Trip hits theaters this weekend. Starring Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett-Smith, and Regina Hall, the film is the beneficiary of great reviews. 89% on Rotten Tomatoes! And one thing all the raves have in common is that they single our the fourth member of this quartet of black women, newcomer Tiffany Haddish. NPR’s Scott Tobias leads off his review with praise for Haddish, calling her “so incandescently filthy that a new ratings system should be developed to accommodate her.” The L.A. Times’ Justin Chang calls her “a comic revelation.” Slate’s Aisha Harris says she “steals the show.” And Vulture’s Emily Yoshida says of Haddish that “It’s hard to recall such a revelatory comedic performance from a still relatively unknown actor.”
None of this is a surprise if you’ve even so much as seen a trailer for Girls Trip, where Haddish presents as the star simply in two and a half minutes and with merely the phrase “booty hole.”
For most, this was the first they’d seen of Tiffany Haddish. Which only exposed those people as having never seen The Carmichael Show before. On that recently (unfortunately) cancelled NBC sitcom, Tiffany played Nekeisha, estranged wife of Lil Rel Howery’s character. Nekeisha wasn’t central to the show, but she was always popping up and delivery one or two perfect line deliveries.
In the 2016 movie Keanu, Haddish played a featured role as Hi-C, a gangster who is not about to take any shit from Ana Farris (among other things).
But as has been on full display throughout the Girls Trip press tour, Haddish’s ideal environment is the talk show. Take for a quick example this clip of the Carmichael Show crew on The Steve Harvey Show:
A perfect example of a simple story elevated by Haddish’s fantastic comedic instincts and storytelling gifts. Gifts that were put to phenomenal use on the premiere episode of Talk Show the Game Show on TruTV, where she told a story about taking Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith on a groupon swamp tour.
Tiffany won, because obviously she did. It’s a killer story, and the proof of that is that when the time came for the Girls Trip press tour, she’d polished and expanded it.
This is the kind of star power where you don’t even have to be in a role to prove it. This is effortless (which isn’t to say it doesn’t take work to appear this effortless).
The last time a comedic actress got the kinds of raves Tiffany Haddish has gotten for Girls Trip was Melissa McCarthy for Bridesmaids. And she got an Oscar nomination for it. Not saying that’s definitely going to happen, but if it doesn’t … why not?
