Over fifty-six million views, social media in shambles and comedians trying to save face. This is what followed the release of the almost three hour interview of Katt Williams on Shannon Sharpe’s YouTube channel, Club Shay Shay.
Williams is an accomplished comedian and has been active for about thirty years with 12 comedy specials and various movie and TV show roles including live-action and voice acting. Williams was willing to be interviewed by former NFL player Sharpe and commended Sharpe for creating a safe space on his channel for telling the truth.
Sharpe has interviewed many Black celebrities from other comedians to rappers to athletes, but no other interview has gained as much attention as Sharpe’s interview with Williams. Within the first few minutes, Williams began to make comments about comedian Rickey Smiley before Sharpe could ask his first question.
Williams went on to debunk statements Smiley made in another interview about a role Smiley said he was supposed to play instead of Williams in the movie Friday After Next. Williams continued by calling out more comedians like Kevin Hart, Tyler Perry, Steve Harvey, Cedric the Entertainer, Earthquake, Faizon Love, Chris Tucker, Martin Lawernece and rapper Ludacris.
Jaiden Goodman (12) grew up seeing Williams in the media, such as clips of Williams’ comedy specials and grew up knowing who Williams was, thinking of him as a celebrity of his parents’ generation. Goodman watched the interview in its entirety and was left shocked.
“It was crazy,” Goodman said. “I believed him…I didn’t doubt Katt Williams until he was talking about how many books he read as a child.”
After blasting comedian after comedian, about an hour had passed and the interview was able to move back on track, so Williams talked about his childhood and journey through comedy. Williams spoke on his academic upbringing and spoke about himself supposedly reading 3,000 books a year from the time he was eight years old to the time he was twelve years old and left home at a very early age to move to Florida on his own.
“His coming up story was a little shady,” Goodman said. “I didn’t understand how he made it all the way out to Florida and made a living for himself, … the way he was talking about it made it sound fabricated.”
Some viewers argued that Williams shouldn’t have put the comedians on blast and should have handled their differences privately, but Goodman disagrees and would have preferred it if Sharpe could have included the evidence in the interview to show Williams was not lying.
“I would have liked it if Shannon Sharpe played the clips that he was talking about from the other comedians’ interviews, or did some research to put the clip in the video for the viewers to see that Katt was telling the truth,” Goodman said.
Katt Williams is known for being comfortably outspoken on topics and very particular in his wording about those he does not care for, so for many, the nature of the interview was not shocking. When speaking on comedian Steve Harvey, he claimed when Harvey said he did not become a movie star simply because he did not want to, Williams responded by saying it was because no one would want Harvey playing any of their roles; proceeding to mock his personality and looks, which was one comment that stood out to Goodman.
“I thought about it and I was like ‘Honestly, Steve Harvey’s face is so Steve Harvey’, I don’t feel like he could really play other roles,” Goodman said.
Williams also mentioned that Harvey, Smiley and Cedric the Entertainer were in a gatekeeping alliance, where they “open and close the gate” to whoever goes along with their group.
“I’ve never seen them together, but I do believe they are in an alliance just because of how all of them were talking about Katt and how all of them responded in the same way,” Goodman said.
Some fans of Williams felt he had been blackballed in the industry for his outspokenness. Williams himself shared how he felt about feeling he had been canceled in the interview.
“I can see how he was blackballed because the whole reason I thought Katt Williams was a part of the older generation was because I never saw anything from him that was recent,” Goodman said. “He probably had one or two specials on Netflix that I watched maybe a year or two ago, but nothing recent.”
The interview caused an uproar on the internet, mainly due to the bluntness of Williams’s statements, but also because of the names he called out, who up until this point, had a decent reputation and were already household names.
“To see someone who you watched in your childhood and free time, that would be a little jarring,” Goodman said. “Because it’s like ‘Dang, I thought they were super funny. I can’t believe they did this to Katt or that they were doing any of this in general.’”
One could argue Williams did not really have a reason to go on Club Shay Shay and expose anything in public and was just being petty, but many would disagree and say that Williams was just trying to clear up lies.
(CLUB SHAY SHAY)
“He said ‘You know what? Let me come on here and speak my truth,’ and honestly I don’t blame him because I would have done the same thing,” Goodman said.
Since the release, Williams has received more support than backlash, with some finding a new regard for Williams.
“I am not a fan of Katt Williams, but I do respect him a little bit more now after the interview,” Goodman said.
Several celebrities, such as rapper Ice Cube who produced and co-wrote the movie Friday After Next, released a ten minute video in Williams’ defense. Not all celebrities who were called out by Williams have responded, but the ones who have, one could say have dug themselves in a deeper hole by not trying to prove themselves innocent, but dismissing Williams as bitter or jealous.
“I definitely knew that they were, if not all the way guilty, at least a little bit,” Goodman said. “Because if someone were to lie on you and you literally have text messages and proof, why would you not post it.”