Stand-up comic Katt Williams is a long-time provocateur who has feuded with fellow comics and landed in jail numerous times to boot.
But why did his extensive, nearly three-hour interview last week with ESPN First Take host Shannon Sharpe on his podcast “Club Shay Shay” go so monstrously viral?
In its first four days, the podcast episode was watched by more than 32 million times on YouTube, 90 times more popular than Sharpe’s typical podcasts before the release of this interview Jan. 3.
Williams, who has lived in metro Atlanta for many years, created one of the first big viral moments of 2024 by going after a menagerie of fellow Black comics such as Kevin Hart, Steve Harvey, Cedric the Entertainer and Michael Blackson. He maligned Harvey’s acting skills, accused Cedric of stealing one of his jokes, alleged Blackson is using a fake African accent and claimed Hart took roles Williams passed over. He also said Atlanta’s Ludacris has ties to the Illuminati.
The 52-year-old veteran actor and comic does not do a lot of interviews, but when he does, he rarely minces words. He‘s been arrested so many times in Georgia that he was banned from entering two counties.
Dionne Mahaffey, an Atlanta psychologist and tech entrepreneur who is a big fan of Williams, said people are drawn to his authenticity. “He’s naturally funny,” Mahaffey said. “His humor is not forced. It just spills out, even in random encounters and conversations with people.”
She said he has a moral code and will go against the Hollywood grain, which may have cost him TV and film roles but has allowed him to say what he wants. “He is also self-funded,” she said. “He finances his own shows and tours. He’s a regular guy who happens to also be hilarious.”
In another viral moment in 2018, he roasted former V-103 host Wanda Smith in 2018 on air, then later got into a tiff with Smith’s husband outside a Norcross comedy club.
>>RELATED: Katt Williams list of arrests over the years
Williams is nothing if not shrewd. He has 29 comedy shows on sale now from January through May and this publicity certainly goosed sales. He has no dates scheduled in Atlanta but has shows scheduled in Greenville, South Carolina, on March 30 and in Nashville, Tennessee, on April 20.
One of his targets, Blackson, on X said Williams purposely “took shots at the top 10 comedians alive today so we can all respond and make him relevant again.”
Indeed, Williams shamelessly broke basic Hollywood decorum by criticizing his peers without any filters, targeting comics with more mainstream appeal than him who made career decisions that Williams himself said he wouldn’t make on principle.
“Due to the level of comedians and entertainers he talked about, he disturbed how many people viewed them or always wondered about them,” said Angelo Sykes, who runs Uptown Comedy Corner in Hapeville. “If he said it about someone not as famous, it has no effect, but to say something about big dogs in the game with such confidence gives the wow effect!”
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