Katt Williams thinks he may have a role in individuals feeling emboldened to attack comedians.
The standup comic says that as a “public official” of comedy, he should have handled a 2018 run-in with former “V103” radio personality Wanda Smith’s husband, Lamorris, in a way that resulted in consequences.
That September, Williams appeared on the “Frank Ski and Wanda Show” where he and Smith found themselves in a heated roast. According to the “Friday After Next” actor, tensions from the contentious back-and-forth boiled over when he and Smith’s husband had their own exchange of words. Williams claimed Lamorris pointed a gun at him, though he would later change his story. Surveillance footage and Lamorris confirm he had a gun, but whether or not it was ever pointed at Williams is unclear.
“When we allow the situation where I was talking with a comedian and we were roasting each other — even though I didn’t call her out of her name or do anything degrading — it was still okay for her 400-pound husband to come later with a gun and try to end my life,” said Williams.
He continued, “Because I didn’t have that man go to jail and ruin that family, it starts to create a culture where it says you can hurt these people. We should be protected,” he further explained in a recent interview. “So I wasn’t able to voice it appropriately and when things are in the atmosphere and they don’t get tended to, it’s a snowball effect.”
The snowball effect in which WIllaims mentions includes Will Smith hauling off and slapping Chris Rock at this year’s Oscars in March when a joke was made of Jada Pinkett Smith’s bald appearance. Weeks later, Dave Chapelle was also attacked while telling jokes onstage for the Netflix is a Joke Festival. The alleged attacker would later say Chappelle’s jokes about the transgender community provoked the attack.
“So now a comedian is somehow being deemed as deserving of it or, ‘Oh, well, you said such and such so that equals this,’ but we don’t have any words or collection of words that equal violence.”
