to the hospital. He told the doctors not to tell me anything that’s going on with him. I know that he had congestive heart failure, but he wouldn’t tell me anything else.
Tiffany: “Dad, well, if you don’t let them tell me, what do you want me to do? What if you die?”
Dad: “I want you to cremate my body and take me back to Africa and put me next to my mother.”
He told the hospital not to call me or contact me until he was dead. They called me just before he died, because they felt like that was wrong. I flew up there, paid for the mortuary, everything.
I called one of his cousins to tell him. He started telling me about all this property I got in Africa, and that I’m actually a princess in his old village. That my dad was like a king in the village, but he ran away because of the war. Then he was saying, there’s back taxes that I need to pay and all this stuff. And if I come, I have to come with some type of security, because it’s still a war going on in the village, where my grandmother’s grave is. And I have to claim this land for the family, before the government finds out my father is dead, because they’ll confiscate it from the family, and then we won’t have nothing, and that’s what they living off of.
I didn’t know about any of this. This feels like it’s a movie. Hopefully, not a tragedy.
I just know that I married a man who promised to find my daddy. I got ten years with my dad. I learned a lot, but I also feel like he punked out on me.
Now he wants me to go to Africa. I don’t know. I am trying to find the funny in that. I still can’t find nothing funny about it, but I’m trying.
She Ready Now
The movie Girls Trip came out in July 2017, did thirty million in the opening weekend, and my life totally changed.
This used to be my normal conversation with directors and producers:
Tiffany: “Hey, I would like to work with you one day.”
Producer: “Ha, yeah, you’re a good comedian.”
Tiffany: “You best get on the Tiffany train while you can, because it’s about to take off.”
Then they all just blew me off.
Now those same directors and producers are blowing my phone up.
The day after the movie came out, I had a hundred text messages.
The next morning when I woke up, four hundred text messages.
That week, I got probably fifteen hundred different people texting me wanting to get together or work together or pitch me on something.
Now, mind you, fifty of the texts were from my ex-husband, trying to get me back. Three of them were from Titus, trying to have lunch and sit down with me at some point, and four other ex-boyfriends sending all kinds of stuff. But still, most were from real Hollywood people.
I gotta admit, that shit feels real good.
Honestly, part of me doesn’t want to work with those people. The people that I asked to give me a chance, the ones who said no, I kinda want to just ignore them. I mean, I’m not going to do that, it’s not professional, but still—I kinda want to.
The funniest part is that Rumpelstiltskin is all over me now. Remember that dude, the one who said, “The only way you can go on tour with me is if you putting out”?
Rumpelstiltskin called me the week after the movie came out:
Rumpelstiltskin: “Hey Tiff, my mom said that you amazing and that I’m a fool for not having you on my shows and stuff. I should have been working with you a long time ago.”
Tiffany: “Your mama right, she a smart woman. I told you that, too.”
Rumpelstiltskin: “Yeah, so how would you feel about doing a tour with me, you, some other comedians. How do you feel about that?”
Tiffany: “I don’t know. You headlining it?”
Rumpelstiltskin: “No, no, no, no, no. I’m going to host. You be the headliner. You the main attraction. You the big deal.”
Tiffany: “I’m listening.”
Rumpelstiltskin: “I talked to your people, they say you get a thousand dollars a minute.”
Tiffany: “That’s right. It used to be a dollar a minute. Now it’s a thousand dollars a minute. That’s right.”
Rumpelstiltskin: “Oooo, that’s a little steep. How about if we do thirty-four shows, and half of them will be in theaters and the other half will be in arenas. How would you