Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Tiffany Haddish Worked The Bar Mitzvah Circuit Before She Was Famous

These days, Tiffany Haddish is introducing Academy Award nominees alongside Maya Rudolph and making history as the first black female standup comedian to host Saturday Night Live — but there was a time when you (yes, YOU!) could have hired her to perform at your bar or bat mitzvah.

Haddish said in an interview with Vanity Fair that, in addition to her nightly sets at comedy clubs across Los Angeles, she was also available for bar mitzvahs.

“You know, everybody would be like, ‘Man, Tiffany, you’re so funny.’,” Said Haddish. “But they always used to tell me like, ‘you’re too dirty. You’re too dirty.’ I was doing bar mitzvahs too, but everybody didn’t know that. I was very clean at the mitzvahs.”

Sadly, Haddish is probably now unaffordable for anyone who is not Lena Dunham’s future child but chin up — she also told Vanity Fair that it is her goal to be in 80 movies by the time she is 50, which will be in 12 years.

That means we will be seeing Haddish in roughly 3 1/2 movies a year until 2030, which feels just about right.

Becky Scott is the editor of The Schmooze. Follow her on Twitter, @arr_scott

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.

Exit mobile version