“I’ve studied Charlie Chaplin for years. I’ve studied Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, all of them. I don’t play around. This is not a game.” – Tiffany Haddish

And watching her work, you can tell. You can tell it’s not a game.

You don’t even need to know her background, growing up in foster care, to perceive that this is not a game to Tiffany Haddish. Making people laugh is her reason for living. She says it repeatedly. It’s how she survived her terrible childhood, it was her way out, yes, but it was also her way to CONNECT. She was so alienated, so tossed out there into the world with no protection, she needed to connect to people, and making people laugh was how she did it. Because laughter brings people together. It sounds so trite when you just write it out like that. But it’s not trite at all. It’s profound. Considering Haddish’s outrageously funny sensibility and talent, it is not at all a surprise that she is also a good and thoughtful dramatic actress. Only people who … don’t know shit (#sorrynotsorry) … are surprised when a “funny actor” turns out to be a good dramatic actor. I wrote a whole column about this.

I was so proud when NYFCC awarded Tiffany Haddish Best Supporting Actress for her MANIACAL performance in Girls Trip. She was my #1 by a long shot. I’m not big on numerical rankings, but sometimes you have to submit to the rules and make some choices. And sometimes someone comes along so clearly far and beyond everyone else – not “better” necessarily – but just way WAY past the normal definition of “good” and/or “best” – that you’ve just got to stop and give the props, you’ve got to call it out, and – if you are able – hand the person an award recognizing the achievement. Haddish’s performance in Girls Trip was that kind of performance.

But first, you’ve got to understand what “good” looks like, and then you have to understand why someone like Tiffany Haddish is way way WAY beyond any normal concept of “good.” If you just think, “Oh, she’s funny” … then you lack understanding of what, exactly, it is she is doing, and why it is so different, why what she was doing in that movie was a one-of-a-kind-type deal. I get frustrated with people who hear language like this and think I’m “gushing” or over-exaggerating or being hyperbolic. NO. I RECOGNIZE that Tiffany Haddish hits DIFFERENT and I am trying to at least ATTEMPT to talk about it, to at LEAST point it out.

Talent like Haddish’s comes along once in a generation, if that. The only person I could compare her to – and even there it’s not an exact comparison – is Madeline Kahn … and I don’t compare anyone to Madeline Kahn. But Haddish’s work is as far “out there” as Kahn’s. Both actresses are out of their minds when it comes to committing to a character. You can’t LEARN to be “out of your mind” like that. You can’t LEARN to trust your instincts to such a degree. You can learn to trust your instincts MORE, you can learn to be MORE fearless, to encourage yourself to “be bigger” and more expressive … but you can’t learn how to do what Kahn did, or what Haddish does. You have to just be able to do it.

And almost no one can.

Where other actors stop, Haddish keeps going. Other actors – talented ones too! – have lines within them which they don’t cross. Their conception of how big they can get in a performance has a limit. They aren’t aware of it. OR, to put it more plainly: they just don’t have as much IN them as Tiffany Haddish does. There isn’t as MUCH to give in them. What I am talking about is not meritocracy. It’s aristocracy. This is the aristocracy of talent and there is nothing anyone can do about it. The distribution of talent – or genius – is not a level playing field.

Madeline Kahn had more talent than other people. She had more IN there to get OUT. And so does Haddish.

Another reason the NYFCC award for Haddish was such a triumph is its rarity: an acting award for a comedic performance! Comedy performances are so rarely honored, and this has always infuriated me because a truly funny person is in possession of something RARE. They’re touched by the lunatic gods. The bar for entry into comedy is much higher than entry into drama. Drama is remedial math compared to the AP calculus of comedy. That’s just the way it is.

Haddish is never less than 100% authentic, and I think that’s one of the reasons why she’s so different. For example: her speech when accepting her NYFCC awards. It went on … and on … and on … and she kept it going, including the statue behind her, which gave her an on-the-spot organizing principle for her speech. I have never seen or heard anything like that speech in all my life, and I was just honored I was there to witness it. She’s a wonder.

Cut from Girls Trip to 2021: she is in Card Counter, one of the best films of the year, directed by one of the great American auteurs, Paul Schrader. The character she plays is nothing like the character in Girls Trip, and yet she is equally authentic. There’s a very centered calm quality to her in Card Counter, she’s extremely relaxed onscreen (and therefore you relax), and much of what she does is listen to Oscar Isaac, but listen in a way that helps us see him – and his oddness – through her eyes. She listens to what he doesn’t say. This isn’t faux listening. It’s in the moment real listening, being as open as possible to the man across the table from her. There are some very complicated elements at play here, and Haddish elegantly and easily navigates them all. I believe in this woman. I believe who she is. I did not know there were women who did this kind of thing, because it’s a world I know nothing about, but I totally believe now that there are such women, because Haddish so easily inhabited that world.

And the final shot of the film – which I would not dare give away – was so powerful the breath snagged in my throat. I thought my heart would explode.

All of these words are just to say: Tiffany Haddish needs to be protected at all costs, because we need her. The industry needs her.