Tiffany Haddish has definitely worked her way up the Hollywood ladder, but she isn’t shy about her turbulent childhood.
The 40-year-old appeared on Vlad TV and had the pleasure of getting interviewed by fellow comedian, Luenell.
Luenell referenced her 2017 New York Times bestselling book, The Last Black Unicorn, which she narrated the audiobook for.
“That was kinda cool to be nominated for a Grammy for reading out loud when I couldn’t read at one point in time in my life when I was in my teens,” Haddish disclosed. She said a drama teacher helped her learn how to read.
Luenell asked her what caused her to have literacy issues and Haddish chalked it down to low-self esteem because people around her used to call her “stupid.”
“Because I thought I was stupid. Everybody would say to me, ‘You’re stupid, you’re stupid, you so stupid.’ At that time in my life, I took things literally,” Haddish said. “So if everybody’s telling me you’re stupid – my stepdad, my mom, grandma, everybody used to say, ‘You so stupid.’ So, I believed I was stupid and I can’t read and I can’t do these things because I’m stupid.”
But it’s not until she turned 18-years-old when a woman gave her a different perspective and explained that people were probably calling her funny. “All these years people been telling me I’m funny, but they didn’t say ‘funny,’ they said ‘you stupid?’ So, I learned a lesson that day.”
Check out the full interview below:
