Nobody wanted to go after Tiffany Haddish.
The Girls Trip star accepted her best-supporting-actress prize from the New York Film Critics Circle around the halfway point of the N.Y.F.C.C. gala, after a tribute from Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker to the recently deceased Lincoln Plaza Cinemas owner Dan Talbot, and before Jane Pauley handed the best-picture prize to Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird.
As a ceremony that is not aired on television—and hands prizes to winners who already know they’ve won—the gala, held in the cavernous TAO Downtown, is always an intimate and chummy event. But it rarely reaches the volume of a packed comedy club, as it did when Haddish took the stage with an 18-minute acceptance speech, which included references to Skype sex, a joke cut from Girls Trip for being too raunchy, and a lot of flirting with Michael B. Jordan.
After Haddish’s speech, the rest of the winners and presenters couldn’t stop themselves from referencing her. Edward Norton, who took the stage immediately after to present the best-supporting-actor trophy to Willem D
afoe, said, “This is awkward, but Tiffany Haddish just gave Willem’s speech word for word.” And Timothée Chalamet, accepting the best-actor prize for his role in Call Me by Your Name, threw in a reference to the unlikely fruit-sex connection between his film and Girls Trip: “Tiffany, you know grapefruits very well. I know peaches.”
Below, read a full transcript of the speech that nobody could stop talking about. N.Y.F.C.C. member and BuzzFeed News critic Alison Willmore also filmed a complete video that offers some much-needed context—the many-armed goddess that loomed over the stage; the cocktail Haddish sipped from for dramatic impact—and shows how Haddish’s own delivery made her jokes land. Anyone preparing to give a speech at the Golden Globes this Sunday now has the unenviable challenge of topping this one.
O.K., this is not a grapefruit. This is a microphone; I’m much better with that. The Tiffany special [a special cocktail]—I wanna call it the Tiffanicity-tini. It’s delicious. I’ve had two, and I do feel like magic.
First, I want to look at the award and make sure they spelled my name right—because I remember when I ran track, they spelled my name wrong. It’s right. Somebody did this with calligraphy and everything. [To a friend at her table]Remember when we took calligraphy class? I have my best friend with me, and my other best friend, and my other best friend.
O.K. First, I want to thank God, because without God, my mama and daddy wouldn’t have put their two uglies together and they wouldn’t have made me. That was all God right there. He put two crazy people together to make this one awesome, crazy person. So I super-thank God. I want—[looking at the statue above the stage, a many-armed goddess holding several different items] I’ve been staring all night. Y’all see this?
All night I’ve been staring at this bitch. I’m trying to figure out “Who is this bitch?” Her name is Quan Yin. Quan Yin is a goddess in Hinduism. I’m here to teach you. And when I look at her, I feel like I’m looking at myself. Like she taking a nap, but she doing a lot of stuff all at the same time. That’s what my life has been like the last year. I’m asleep, but I’m woke. I’ve never been more tired in my whole entire existence, and I feel like I do all these things.
Like, she got some weed or some drink in both hands; she holding on to the rings, you know, because she trying to get a ring on it. She working out—she got dumbbells. She holding feathers because she take care of animals and creatures. She got an eraser to erase the bullshit. She holding on to some seeds or a pinecone, which means she’s trying to produce and create, and that’s exactly what I’m trying to do. I’m not trying to get pregnant yet, Michael, but I’m working on it. B. Jordan.
You see these plates that she got? I don’t know if these are plates or if this is distributing medication, because I worked in a pharmacy for two days. This brings us to feed people. I’m going to go with that’s a plate to feed people, because she feeds people with spiritual knowledge. That’s where I’m going because sometimes I do that too.
She got the sun in her hand because she light this motherfucker up. That’s me too! Then I think she got a cracker because she get hungry. And then she’s got another little thing in her hand . . . [speaking up to the lights] Can y’all light this? Y’all have it lit up all night—I get up here and you turn it off. I seen the bitch blink twice. It scared the fuck out of me. Did y’all see her blinking? I was like, “I know I didn’t take my drugs today.”
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