Tiffany Haddish tells the story behind the title of her book “The Last Black Unicorn.” She opens up about how being bullied pushed her to succeed and her struggles with literacy as a kid.
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00:00 So the last unicorn, the last black unicorn,
00:02 is an interesting title for this book,
00:04 which we're gonna talk about a little bit.
00:05 But, and I read it, and I understand it,
00:08 but this is a story you gotta tell the audience.
00:09 'Cause I have no idea what this thing used to look like,
00:12 but describe it if you can,
00:13 how you would treat the unicorn horn that you had.
00:16 - Okay, so what I thought was a mole,
00:18 turns out it was actually a wart growing on my forehead.
00:22 And it was growing out like a horn,
00:25 and I would cut it and stuff when kids would make fun of it,
00:28 and that way it would make them stop and be like,
00:30 "Oh my gosh, Tiffany bleeding from her head."
00:32 And then it would grow out immediately again,
00:35 and then I would chase people with it and stuff.
00:37 I was a weirdo.
00:39 - But it's not there now, I don't see it.
00:40 - It's not there, it got burned off.
00:41 My grandma burned it off or whatever with the, you know.
00:44 - So it was a virus, it was a wart?
00:46 - It was a wart.
00:47 That's what that one doctor said.
00:49 When she took me and they said, "That's a wart."
00:51 And it was like the liquid nitrogen or whatever
00:53 they put it on there.
00:55 - So those kids were mean to you when you were young?
00:56 - Oh yeah, oh yeah.
00:58 - Just to fight them off?
00:58 - Yeah, yeah.
01:00 And so they used to be like, "You a dirty ass unicorn."
01:01 And I'm, and, that's messed up.
01:05 Well, once I got older, you know how sometimes
01:09 you can hear your bullies talking mess about you,
01:11 you can hear it in the back of your mind sometimes,
01:13 like playing over and over.
01:15 And I started thinking to myself as I got older,
01:17 you know what, I'm gonna take all those mean things
01:19 that those kids said to me,
01:21 and I'm gonna make money off of it.
01:22 (audience applauding)
01:27 And that's what I did.
01:28 - You did that well.
01:30 Although I gotta say, early on,
01:32 I mean, you're obviously an incredibly intelligent woman
01:34 'cause you basically memorized life
01:35 'til you're in ninth grade.
01:37 'Cause Tiffany acknowledges, again,
01:39 part of what I love about you is you just tell the truth.
01:41 - Right.
01:41 - You couldn't read,
01:42 and you were in ninth grade.
01:43 - Yeah, I was very bad at it.
01:45 Don't clap for that, that's not a good thing.
01:47 That's not a good, that's, you know, like.
01:49 - That's a telling the truth they're clapping,
01:50 'cause it's hard to admit that.
01:52 And we got kids all over this country now
01:53 who are in ninth grade who can't read.
01:55 - Really? - I thought you, yeah.
01:56 - You know why we got these broken up, like,
01:57 things in text messages?
01:59 - Yes, an example.
02:00 - What does this mean?
02:01 - That's a good example.
02:02 - TTY, what is TTY?
02:04 I don't know.
02:05 - TTY.
02:06 - LOL, just say laugh out loud.
02:07 Why you gotta say LOL?
02:08 Lazy.
02:09 - Lazy.
02:10 - So they can't spell.
02:10 - Lazy out loud.
02:11 - They can't spell laugh out loud.
02:12 - But I thought you were dyslexic.
02:14 I looked for reasons,
02:15 but it looks like you just were never taught to read.
02:17 - No, I don't think anyone actually took the actual time
02:20 to, like, sit down with me and read with me
02:23 and make sure I had it right.
02:24 Or, I don't know if I'm dys,
02:26 you know, I never really got tested.
02:27 I don't know.
02:28 But recently, my drama teacher who did sit down with me,
02:32 she just emailed me,
02:33 and so we're communicating,
02:35 and I'm gonna ask her,
02:36 did she think I was dyslexic?
02:37 Do you think I was dyslexic, girl?
02:39 - Well, I'm very happy.
02:40 - I don't think so, though.
02:41 Maybe just a little bit.
02:42 - If you don't mind.
02:43 - I'm gonna use that excuse.
02:44 - Yeah, I don't want to take it,
02:45 'cause I think it's so truthful
02:46 that you were able to memorize tons of stuff.
02:50 - The brain is an amazing thing,
02:51 and when you care about something
02:53 and when you want to not be outed
02:54 or not to look stupid
02:56 or not to be, you know, made fun of,
02:58 you will memorize and do whatever it takes to survive.
03:02 - So how would you escape being caught
03:05 as not being able to do that?
03:06 You're in ninth grade.
03:07 Don't they have you read stuff?
03:08 - Yeah, sometimes they would have you read things out loud,
03:10 so then you cut up in class,
03:11 you make noise, you whatever,
03:12 get sent to the dean's office, right?
03:14 So then you don't have to read.
03:15 Or you, like, if I knew that we had these chapters to do
03:19 or whatever beforehand,
03:20 like, if I knew, like,
03:21 the syllabus said whatever,
03:22 or, like, and I hear kids talking, like,
03:24 oh, we gotta do this tomorrow,
03:25 we gotta do chapter 12, 13, 14, tomorrow,
03:28 then I would be like,
03:28 which guy has a great voice?
03:30 So then I would find a dude in school
03:32 that got, like, a nice deep voice,
03:33 and somebody like, ooh, I love your voice,
03:35 could you read this to me?
03:36 And, like, every word that he said,
03:38 I would memorize.
03:39 And then, you know, confidence!
03:42 Confidence is everything,
03:43 where they think they on the wrong paragraph.
03:45 (laughs)
03:46 (audience applauds)
03:47 - So how would your drama teacher,
03:50 just, that you just mentioned,
03:51 how'd you figure out that you couldn't read?
03:53 - She wanted me to do a monologue, right?
03:55 And so in class, like, okay,
03:57 so in drama class,
03:58 when there would be monologues
04:00 of things that you had to do,
04:01 I would always go up to the girls
04:02 that I thought was the smartest and most, like,
04:04 you know, like, they thought they were so smart and prissy,
04:06 like, and they, uh, like.
04:09 So I would go up to them and ask them to read it,
04:10 to, like, how would you act this out?
04:12 I wanna try to be like you, you know?
04:14 And they would do, they would show me,
04:15 and then I would memorize it,
04:17 and I would do it.
04:17 And she handed something to me right then.
04:20 And so she goes, "Tiffany, do this right now."
04:21 And I was like, "I gotta pee.
04:23 "I gotta this, I gotta,"
04:25 like, immediately trying to, like, get out of it.
04:28 And she was like, "Can you read?"
04:29 I was like, "Ain't none of your business what I can do."
04:31 And I just kind of just stormed, you know,
04:32 like, get out of here.
04:34 And once I came back, she was like,
04:36 "Read to me right now.
04:37 "No, you're gonna read to me right now."
04:40 - So how did she teach you?
04:41 - Oh, she made me come every, like, you know,
04:43 we have 15 minutes,
04:44 I don't know about the rest of the world,
04:45 but in Los Angeles, we had nutrition and lunch.
04:47 So during nutrition, it was like 15 minutes,
04:49 I had to come and read to her.
04:51 And then during lunch, I had to come to read to her.
04:53 Every day for a whole semester,
04:54 and I caught on super quick, so.
04:56 - Can we give a hand to teachers
04:57 who go the extra length?
04:59 - Yeah.
05:00 - That's so cool, and I'm glad you reached out to her.
05:02 - Yeah.
05:03 - We'll be right back.
05:04 - Thank you for watching.
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