Tiffany Haddish will come for you, if you come for her.
The “Girls Trip” and “Haunted Mansion” star admits that she takes matters of online bullying into her own hands when it comes to her reputation — and sometimes gives her haters a real-world surprise.
Given all the negative talk about the comedian — amid a short-lived but damaging grooming scandal, her repeat DUI arrests and her controversial trip to Israel in February — she’s begun blocking certain phrases on Instagram, including “setback,” “pedo” and “not funny,” she recently told L.A. Times columnist Amy Kaufman.
She’s also taken her online sleuthing further, dipping into the realm of digital vigilantism.
The 44-year-old Haddish said she has hired a digital forensics analyst to research where her death threats were coming from, learning that 75% were bots out of Malaysia and Iran. The Emmy- and Grammy-winning star also said she created a fake Instagram account where an alter ego named Sarah will go in and “destroy” anyone hating on her. She does it by learning details about trolls’ personal lives and using them to her advantage.
“I’ve learned how to find people’s information — like I pull up the credit report, police records. You can do that for $1.99,” Haddish said. “Sometimes, I get so mad that I’ll get they phone number and I’ll just call them.”
Yes, really.
“Oh, I have called people, honey,” she confirmed. “They be shocked that I called. They’ll be like, ‘I can’t believe you even saw that.’ You did a whole video, b—! You made a full, five-minute video! On the internet, people think they can just say whatever and you not gonna say anything. I try my best not to, but I’m a human being.”
The star of “The Afterparty” and “Night School” also talks to Kaufman about the idea of feeling “hunted” and how that factored into her decision not to have kids, sharing that she has had eight miscarriages, which felt like having “your soul falling out of your body,” and an abortion.
“I would hate to give birth to someone who looks like me, knowing they’re going to be hunted or killed,” she writes in “I Curse You With Joy,” her latest book of autobiographical essays due out Tuesday. “I don’t want the stress of worrying every time my Black baby goes to school or goes to hang out with their friends that they could end up dead.”
Haddish also discusses how she’s cut back on doing too much, her mental health — which she says is perfectly fine, by the way — and the attitude adjustment she has experienced from people in the industry after her scandals, not to mention her history with homelessness, domestic violence and rape, which she has mined for material.
Read the full column here.
