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Until then, enjoy thisGood Oneinterview with Williams from 2022.
Its a level of output that speaks to how incredibly prolific Williams is and how he approaches his career.
you’re able to read an excerpt from the transcript or listen to the full episode, below.
Tune in toGood Oneevery Thursday onApple Podcasts,Spotify,Stitcher,Overcast, orwherever you get your podcasts.
How does a comedian come up with 12 incredibly specific minutes about a place he doesnt currently live?
I would be in your town for three to four days.
I got to do two shows on Thursday, two shows on Friday.
Im here, Im there.
Im at the best restaurant.
Im at the barbershop, at the club, at the strip club.
Im everywhere I need to be to do the stand-up thing I do in real time.
You recently talked aboutnot working your material out in clubs.
When did you make this decision?It was a natural evolution.
I loved working in the clubs and being a club comic.
Theyll take your premise and setup and add a different punch line.
It was the wild, wild west.
I didnt want to accidentally be involved with any of that on my end.
In general, you have a way with words of how you say specific words.
Youll say the wordeverything,and itll be like five syllables long.
How do you approach that signature part of the way you speak?
I might have read 30,000 to 40,000 books in my life.
If youre a lover of books, you know theres a cadence and movement to good material.
As a comedian, Im a journalist and Im a chronicler.
Im from Mark Twain.
Im from musical storytellers.
Im from the griots.
Youre supposed to be able to live within what Im presenting because I talk for a living.
That means if I sayeh-vuh-ree-thing, you understand it means all parts of it.
If I say it correctly, youll know the difference between that andehv-ree-thing.
This is your 12th special.
And they hired bum comedians to open up for them so they could look better.
But they were telling the same jokes over and over and over and over and over again.
We were the creators of that, so were very proud of it.
And it meant we had to be consistently putting out a televised hour that we wrote and successfully toured.
World War IIIis the first special you directed.
Why did you choose to direct it?
How did that change your approach to it?Im always just trying to do something different.
If you tell me that it was a strikeout, I wont take it personally.
That comes with having more specials than anybody else.
In this business, the customer is always right.
So now Ive got a shoddy one too.
Youre describing a real trust between you and your audience.
I pride myself on the fact that I can say to my audience, Wheres the white people?
And youre going to hear a roar.
Wheres the black people?
And youre going to hear a roar.
I can hit any one of them, and youre going to hear the representation.
I want to ask about that.
First, the women that youre very proud of.
Anything that matters to you, you show that it matters by how you are.
My mother was a woman.
If I have to pick my favorite thing on the planet, its a woman.
So I can be biased that way.
I still got males.
Thats not the point.
You have been open about your successes and your shortcomings with your audience.
What does it mean for you to be open about your failings?Were all flawed.
There is no such thing as the person that cannot fall down.
There is such a thing as a person who did not get back up.
Im showing you trampoline skin.
Well, thats fine, but thats nobodys real life.
Youve closed every special talking about sex and/or vaginas or things in that area.
Youre a master at it.Allegedly, hearsay, objection.
No one humps a stool like Katt Williams.Williams lifts up his hands in celebration.
Who doesnt want to leave the audience dancing on their way out?
Its about the fact that I am qualified to talk about sex.
And yes, sometimes I consensually share with the stool whatever Im trying to sell.
In their head, women will go,What would you know about pussy anyway?
If that alone was my brand and signature, Id be proud of that.
I no longer talk about family things or everyday interactions in my stand-up.
Im only looking for difficult conversations.
Plus I didnt want to have to deliver any downers.
Like, I might have been telling jokes about a child, and that child might have passed away.
For some comedians, they got two kids.
I got ten kids, and seven of them are adopted.
So thats what made me steer away from some things.
Decades later, who isMicah, and who is Katt?This is really important.
Almost all of that is true.
And yet, together, none of that makes any sense or could possibly be true whatsoever.
I was conceived at the Catskills Mountains.
They went to the Catskills and they went to the Sierra Mountains.
So that is how Katt and Sierra are both my middle names.
I stopped going by my first name because that was my sons name, and hes not a junior.
I was Katt in the Hat the entire time.
They sent a broke comedian a cease-and-desist from the biggest corporation in the globe.
And I said, If Disney even knows I exist, Im gonna make it.
It is on my identification and on my birth certificate because thats my name.
I was trying to have a stage name, and they wouldnt allow me to have a stage name.
How that goes to the teeth thing, Im not sure.
But I used the money that I got to get it fixed.
No, I dont have any recollection of that.
I heard youin an interviewtalking about accepting your status as a legend during the pandemic.
Growing up, who were legends to you?
I loved comedy, and I loved people who I thought did it well.
But I didnt even know that you could make a living telling jokes until I was 22 years old.
We knew Jonathan Winters.
Later, I find out how magical this dude is and what hes having to do.
I didnt need to know anything about your life to read your 400-page autobiography.
So theres only love in my comedy upbringing.
I thought Richard Pryor was exactly what he was.
If he did cocaine or who he slept with or who he married none of that mattered.
I understood that he had to be that so that have those conversations; I got it.
I was just attempting to be the best comedian that I could be.
It didnt take the pandemic for me to understand.
It was the fact that my humility is not for no reason.
My humility allows me to continue to do the best job that I can do.
Even if I was just successful, the humility means I got to be successful again.
Or if the last one was a failure, the humility goes,Yeah, it was a failure.
Do better so this next one is the best one youve ever done.
No one pays you other than the audience.
That is your allegiance.
If a joke may not be funny, try it anyway.
If its not funny enough, make it funny enough.
You are writing these jokes.
Well, if a smart person hears it, what would they say?
Okay, what if a racist heard it what would they say?
This is part of your own quality control that they dont tell you as a comedian.
3 in the country and youll do better next time.
But you want to be a champion no matter what the score is, if possible.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
