She isn’t just an actress. She isn’t just a comedienne. She is a force of nature.
I said most of what I had to say after I saw Girls’ Trip, for which we at the NYFFC awared her Best Supporting Actress. I had heard of her performance, of course, it was getting buzz. Once I saw the performance, I realized the buzz had actually not done her justice. She’s beyond belief. I don’t know how she does what she does. Here’s what I wrote about her.
Watching her give her acceptance speech at the NYFCC awards dinner is unlike any other experience I’ve had. I’ve seen people give speeches. I’ve been to awards shows. I’ve seen a lot of great speeches, funny speeches, surprising speeches. This, though, was something else. I almost couldn’t believe it was happening as it was happening.
Luckily, NYFCC chair Alison Willmore recorded it in its entirety. It was a doozy. It went on forever. And she seems to go way off topic at times – she gets distracted by the huge statue behind her – but she then, spontaneously, used that statue – which she didn’t know was going to be there – as the structure of her speech. I mean, this is really left-brain right-brain creativity on full display. I love her.
And I also must share this. This pairing is almost too much for me.
Dear @TiffanyHaddish – mazel tov on your Bat Mitzvah! Xx B pic.twitter.com/wcteKctzPc
— Barbra Streisand (@BarbraStreisand) December 3, 2019
I would love to see them work together, but it’s enough to know that Babs is firmly in Haddish’s corner. It’s the only place to be.
“The thing I hate the most is people come up to me and I can smell fear on them. It makes me want to fuck them up.”
That is a very powerful sentiment. I really liked this speech, and that notion is something to carry around. You have to know yourself pretty well to see something like that. It’s got me going through memories, thinking about how interactions started, wondering where fear was and how it shows.
Elliott – I loved that you pulled that line out. She was speaking to Erik Kohn – who was then the chair of the NYFCC – and a super nice person. But she took the moment to make this profound statement about how people react to her sometimes. She’s amazing.