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‘Where the Hell Yo A— Been?’: Tiffany Haddish Reveals Her Estranged Father ‘Disappeared Again’ After Trying to Reconnect with Her Post-Fame In Resurfaced Clip
Comedian Tiffany Haddish has been more than candid about her upbringing, including being placed in foster care as a child and later experiencing homelessness as an adult.
She publicly forgave her mother, Leola for the years of abuse she endured but things were much different for her father, Tsihaye Reda Haddish. Though he left when their daughter was 3 years old it seems like he made attempts to change that after Tiffany got famous.
In a clip from her 2017 appearance on the “Hollywood Medium with Tyler Henry,” the “Girls Trip” star explains how her father, Tsehaye Reda Haddish, tried to form a relationship with her later in life.
Henry, who is a medium that helps celebrities connect with their family members who have passed on, said “There’s a father figure that ultimately leaves the family and then ultimately makes a reconnection either when the children are grown up.” He follows this up by asking the actress if she knew anyone tied to Philadelphia.
After initially denying that she did, Haddish then realized her father was living in Philly when she first made contact with him.
“My whole point to meet my father was just to know, like, genetically, what do I have to expect, you know?” she said. “And just, where the hell yo’ ass been? Where yo’ ass was at when I was out here living in the streets, you know? And, yeah.”
Henry responds by letting Haddish know that her paternal grandfather is coming through to talk about his “son’s actions.”
He said her grandfather said, “This man is coming through and basically acknowledging, “‘I’m sorry that my son wasn’t able to be the dad that he could’ve been.’”
Henry then said he doesn’t see the relationship with her father growing any stronger than what it was at the time.
Haddish responded, “’I reconnected with my dad when I was, like, 27. I offered to let him come stay with me and let me take care of him, then he, like, disappeared again.”
Before disappearing, and more than a year after finding him, her father walked her down the aisle when she got married to a man named William Stewart in 2008. They divorced in 2013.
Haddish was around 37 years old when the interview with Henry aired in 2016. This is the same year that Will Packer released the popular film, “Girls Trip,” that catapulted actress’s career.
She proceeded to tell Henry that her father was coincidentally trying to come back in her life again after disappearing.
“He says he wants to come stay with me now,” she said. “There’s a part of me that’s like, well, you kind of missed that boat.”
It’s not clear when the episode was filmed — as opposed to when it actually aired — but Haddish’s father died in 2017 as well.
Despite their relationship having been estranged, it seems Haddish didn’t have super hard feelings against him.
In 2018, she took a trip to Eritrea, the East African country where her father was from, and later at the Academy Awards, she honored him by wearing an authentic Eritrean princess gown known as a Zuria.
“My father is from Eritrea and he passed away last year and he said one day I would end up here and if I ever end up at the Oscars to honor my people. So I’m honoring my fellow Eritreans,” she told Michael Strahan during ABC’s live carpet show after ambushing his interview with fellow actor Daniel Kaluuya.
Tiffany Haddish’s #Oscars dress is a tribute to Eritrea, where her father lived until he passed away last year pic.twitter.com/ebJj1ryPMm
— Jarett Wieselman (@JarettSays) March 5, 2018
The “Like A Boss” star had a rough childhood. When she was 8, her mother Leola was in a car accident caused by her stepfather who purposefully tampered with the breaks. Her mother lived but suffered from brain damage and even had to learn how to walk and talk again.
As a result, her mother became physically and verbally abusive toward Haddish.
“I used to think she was demonized. I thought like maybe someone else jumped inside her body, like ‘Where’s my mommy?’ She’s gone,” she said in a 2019 interview on “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman.”
Five years after the accident, Haddish’s mom was diagnosed with schizophrenia and put in a mental facility. She and her four younger siblings were then put into foster care.
In her teen years, she got involved in The Laugh Factory’s Comedy Camp, the summer program geared toward helping at-risk youth get onstage experience in addition to working with comics like Damon Wayans and Jon Lovitz.
After graduating high school in 1997 and outgrowing the foster system, she lived in her car while performing sketch comedy shows at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles with Kevin Hart.
Haddish started booking sitcoms and movies in the early 2000s. Since then she’s made appearances in “That’s So Raven,” “My Name Is Earl,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” as well as “Real Husbands of Hollywood” and “Night School’ alongside Hart.
Other acting credits on her résumé include “The Carmichael Show,” “The Kitchen,” and “Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker.”
