Tiffany Haddish's quarantine hobbies include head-shaving, psychedelics with Jon Hamm
Tiffany Haddish is keeping typically busy during her theoretical pandemic downtime, as evidenced by her gloriously shaven head on Monday’s Tonight Show. Apart from doing her first live standup in months (pro tip: watch the mask-muffled audience’s eyes to see how you’re doing), the Emmy-nominated stand-up star, actress, and person least likely to sit still for any stupid virus told Jimmy Fallon that remaining responsibly distanced doesn’t mean life is boring. Especially when Tiffany Haddish is around.
You just have to make your own fun, as Haddish explained in reference to her newly-bald head, a pandemic project she said stemmed from a “know thyself” spiritual curiosity, plus boredom. Offhandedly telling Fallon that “her man” did the shaving (we know it’s Common), Haddish admitted there was some trepidation at the drastic hair removal, but that things have worked out fine in the end. Sure, she discovered a couple of head-moles she didn’t know about, and the back is a little wrinkly. But wigs sit better and, as she said of her touch-friendly dome enthusiastically, “my head kind of feels like a penis—and it’s kind of nice.”
As to her return to safely distanced stand-up, Haddish told Fallon that she is one of the illustrious (sometimes infamous) entertainers who’ve accepted Dave Chappelle’s invitation to come perform at his ongoing series of semi-secret Ohio events. Telling Fallon that her wildly successful brand of stand-up has been increasingly informed by recent events (social justice protests as well as that whole pandemic thing), Haddish proposed a Lysistrata/Chi-Raq strategy toward shutting down systemic racism, explaining that women “just closing their legs” will bring men to their knees. (You get it.) Saying that the long-missed live energy was akin to getting/giving the Care Bear stare in front of the appreciative audiences of her long-delayed, socially-distanced live shows, Haddish did say that her time at Chappelle’s joint was additionally enhanced by some herbal tea.
Or, beyond herbal tea, as the generally abstemious comic explained that she had been “peer-pressured” into drinking the communal mushroom brew at Chappelle’s event, alongside other illustrious performers in attendance, including Jon Hamm. (She didn’t say whether Hamm partook, but, c’mon.) Noting that she was perhaps drawing upon her own notoriously troubled childhood experiences as inspiration, Haddish related how her unaccustomed drug experience manifested in a particular yet very understandable way. Listening to Jon Hamm talk at one point, Haddish claimed that her fellow entertainer’s manly visage—and that of everyone else around her—gradually but unmistakably morphed into ideal TV mom Phylicia Rashad. (We can still all admire Clair Huxtable—Clair Huxtable is blameless.) Explaining that she’s now planning to write a movie for herself with Rashad as her onscreen mom, Haddish will just have to chill at home for the foreseeable future, along with Common and her cat costar from Keanu, who lives with her now. Just keep the clippers away from Keanu, Common.