On Monday, Tiffany Haddish kicked off what is turning into a week of FBI-level speculation. In a profile for GQ, the Girls Trip actress revealed that an unnamed celebrity, who was possibly on drugs, bit Beyoncé's face at a party. She wouldn't reveal who it was, but in the past 24 hours everyday citizens and countless publications have committed themselves to finding the truth. Vulture did an investigation into the guests at the party where the alleged biting occurred, and Huffington Post is currently using the process of elimination to see what they can dig up. Even Chrissy Teigen is freaking out. I myself have sent several pleading texts, ranging from "Do you know who bit Beyoncé? Just for personal reasons, I need to know" to "Who fucking bit her." It's definitely a question we'd be remiss not to ask, but in all this fervor, we're neglecting to give Haddish the attention and respect the rest of the profile calls for.
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"By the way, if today's Tiffany Haddish story is the first time you're learning about her life, you should know there's more to it than just Beyoncé," Caity Weaver, the writer of the piece, tweeted on Monday. "Tiffany has lived A LOT. And she's a good narrator. Highly observant and curious about other people."
By the way, if today's Tiffany Haddish story is the first time you're learning about her life, you should know there's more to it than just Beyoncé. Tiffany has lived A LOT. And she's a good narrator. Highly observant and curious about other people. https://t.co/qbdMbu0cBx pic.twitter.com/p7Iksp1orM
— Caity Weaver (@caityweaver) March 26, 2018
The reason the anecdote about Beyoncé took off is because Haddish is such a great storyteller. Of course, you'd know this if you read the whole profile, in which case you'd also know that there are so many other things about Haddish just as worthy of our excitement. For instance, while her success story has been detailed in her book The Last Black Unicorn as well as through short speeches like her Saturday Night Live monologue, it's worth remembering again and again that Haddish is thriving after an extremely difficult childhood. Her father left when she was three years old, and her mother suffered a traumatic brain injury when she was just eight. She went into foster care, and was homeless multiple times as an adult, resorting to living out of her car.
"I think that was God teaching me a lesson over and over," she says in the interview. "I wasn't paying attention the first two times."
There are also wackier tidbits, like the fact that she will put on episodes of The Carmichael Show, on which she was a series regular, in the background in order to get herself that little bit of extra money.
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"I just turn it on and let it play," she said. "I'm like, ‘Hey, let's collect that residual check.’"
And how could we not mention the absolutely wild fact that she drinks turpentine? A literal poison.
"A teaspoon of turpentine will not kill you," she told Weaver. "The government doesn't want you to know that if you have a cold, just take some turpentine with some sugar or castor oil or honey and it'll go away the next day."
P.S. Don't do this!
But perhaps the most moving part of the whole profile is how Haddish has taken her success and turned around and given it all back to her family — the family that suffered so much as she was growing up.
"Literally all my money goes into my grandmother and my mother," she said. "I got a two-bedroom apartment and moved my sister in so she could be monitoring [our mom]. I got nurses for my mom. My grandma bumped her head and had to have her brain drained, and she's dealing with Alzheimer's. I've got meal services coming to the house for her and for my mom."
Haddish never wanted anything more than to take care of her family, and now all those dreams have come true. All in all, the profile is warm and funny and further proof that Haddish is one of the most meaningful and inspiring success stories of our time. Let's not lose that in a haze of drug-fueled celebrity gossip.
(But seriously, if you know who bit Beyoncé, still email me).
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