Tiffany Haddish

Tiffany Cornilia Haddish (born December 3, 1979) is a respected American stand-up comedian and actress. Haddish made significant strides in the comedy film Girls Trip (2017), which resulted in several accolades and resulted in her name being included on The New Yorker's list of the best film performances of the 21st century. Time magazine in 2018 and The Hollywood Reporter in 2018 and 2019 listed Haddish as one of the 100 most influential and powerful people respectively. Haddish's career took a turn after several guest-star roles on multiple television series and leading roles on cable dramas. She gained prominence for her portrayals in the NBC sitcom The Carmichael Show (2015–2017), the TBS series The Last O.G. (2018–2020), and the Apple TV+ comedy series The Afterparty (2022–2023). She also flexed her producing abilities and voiced characters in the Netflix/Adult Swim animated series Tuca & Bertie (2019–2022). For hosting a Saturday Night Live episode (2017), she won a Primetime Emmy Award, wrote a memoir, The Last Black Unicorn (2017), and released the album Black Mitzvah in 2019, winning the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album. This achievement significantly marked her as the second African-American woman to win this prize since Whoopi Goldberg in 1986.

Haddish was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, California by her African-American mother, Leola, a small business owner from a Jehovah's Witness family. Her father, Tsihaye Reda Haddish, was an Eritrean Jew. After Haddish's father left when she was three years old, her mother remarried and Haddish welcomed two half-sisters and two half-brothers. At 13, Haddish and her siblings were placed in foster care, separated temporarily. She used her humor to cope with being in unfamiliar environments. Throughout her life, she faced several struggles including being hospitalized with toxic shock syndrome, homelessness, and assault. She attended George Ellery Hale Middle School and graduated from El Camino Real High School, both in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. In 1997, Haddish opted to attend the Laugh Factory Comedy Camp as a recourse for dealing with her emotional pain. She accredits this experience and the mentorship from many notable comedians—including Richard Pryor, Dane Cook, Charles Fleischer, and the Wayans brothers—for helping her discover her passion for comedy.