Close Menu
    Support Our Work
    Celebrity

    Where Did Tiffany Haddish Go Wrong?

    By 4 Mins Read
    Image credit: ShutterStock

    This past Tuesday, at the renowned MTV Video Music Awards, Tiffany Haddish showed up and showed out, and the internet was not kind about their reactions to her.  

    A once beloved comedic phenom, Haddish is now the butt of the joke and if the Twitter reactions are any indication, once this strike is over, she will still be outside the studios. Haddish has had a long career, but she really gained traction in the 2017 movie Girls Trip, starring opposite Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith and Regina Hall. While they all gave powerhouse performances, it was widely reported that Haddish was a scene stealer to be reckoned with, but now people want very little to do with her. That same year, she released a comedy special titled She Ready, which received favorable reviews from critics.

    However, the tide quickly turned into she wasn’t ready when she bombed her New Year’s Eve performance in Miami in December 2018.

    Apparently, the show was so bad that several fans got up and walked out of the theatre. The performance even garnered boos from the crowd while she drank vodka on stage and even invited audience members to tell jokes. 

    Even though Haddish starred in over a dozen things since Girls Trip, the fanfare has not been as loud since the film and almost came to a screeching halt in August of 2022 when she and comedian Aries Spears (who, full disclosure, I have worked with as well), were sued by a brother and sister for the alleged grooming and sexual abuse of the minors. The suit, which was later dropped, alleged that the minor brother and sister were groomed and assaulted for the purpose of a skit where Spears played a Bill Cosby-esque pervy uncle, who was left to care for Haddish’s children, who were played by the brother and sister. Even though the suit was dropped and the woman who was identified as “Jane Doe,” who is now an adult but played the minor female child, released a statement that retracted her claims, the damage was felt.

     In 2023, three film projects, including Disney’s Haunted Mansion, was released with her involvement; all but two were filmed before the incident came to light and the third was co-produced by her. There have been no new television shows with her cast. However, she is involved in television shows that started filming before the incident occurred. 

    Tuesday night’s VMAs performances were not all musical and Haddish was sure to be seen in multiple scenes, from chasing down Shakira and screaming her name to yelling in the background of Doja Cat’s performance to screaming in the background while Glorilla introduced a musical artist. Black Twitter saw and Black Twitter did not forgive or forget her antics, with many people thinking that her over-the-top behavior—which once garnered her fame—was now fake and unwelcomed. Everyone likes a scene-stealer in movies, but in real life, even at the world’s most over-the-top awards show, the actions seemed to be self-serving and annoying. 

    With the possibility of her light diminishing, maybe this was the fear of a woman whose career may be in jeopardy, manifesting itself in, “Hey, I’m still here guys, remember when you used to love me.” The thing about the genie is that once it’s out of the bottle, there is little hope of squeezing it back in there. 

    With the world watching and waiting for her next trick, maybe Haddish did not have any more. Perhaps her range is that she is out of range and cannot come back. There is a time and place for everything, and maybe Tiffany’s time is up. 

    Kyla Jenée Lacey is an accomplished third-person bio composer. Her spoken word has garnered tens of millions of views, and has been showcased on Pop Sugar, Write About Now, Buzzfeed, Harper’s Bizarre, Diet Prada, featured on the Tamron Hall show, and Laura Ingraham from Fox News called her work, “Anti-racist propaganda.”. She has performed spoken word at over 300 colleges in over 40 states. Kyla has been a finalist in the largest regional poetry slam in the country, no less than five times, and was nominated as Campus Activities Magazine Female Performer of the Year. Her work has been acknowledged by several Grammy-winning artists. Her poetry has been viewed over 50 million times and even used on protest billboards in multiple countries. She has written for large publications such as The Huffington Post, BET.com, and the Root Magazine and is the author of "Hickory Dickory Dock, I Do Not Want Your C*ck!!!," a book of tongue-in-cheek poems, about patriarchy....for manchildren.

    Related Stories