Black Mitzvah

How do you follow up a massive breakout movie role, an Emmy win, and a highly publicized, disastrous New Year’s Eve set? If you are Tiffany Haddish, you hire four muscular men to carry you onto a Los Angeles stage in a chair while singing a hip-hop rendition of “Hava Nagila.”

Black Mitzvah is structured as a lavish coming-of-age celebration for Haddish’s 40th birthday, timed alongside her actual bat mitzvah. Instead of shying away from her public missteps, she immediately addresses her infamous 2018 Miami bomb with a self-effacing spin on her own catchphrase: “She wasn’t ready”. The rest of the set leans into high-energy storytelling, detailing how she discovered her Jewish heritage through her Eritrean father and her pre-fame days working the bar mitzvah dancer circuit to make rent.

Filmed in Los Angeles and released on Netflix on her birthday in December 2019, the special arrived at a critical juncture. She was transitioning from a sudden breakout star into an established Hollywood mogul, pulling double duty as a movie lead and a television host. While the show features celebrity-skewing anecdotes, such as receiving a perfectly tailored jumpsuit from Beyoncé, she balances the glamour with coarser personal routines, like an extremely graphic home remedy involving mayonnaise.

The special earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded). It went on to win the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album in 2021, making Haddish only the second Black woman to take home the prize after Whoopi Goldberg in 1986.