Katt Williams Once Believed It’s Good to Have Boundaries in Comedy
Comedian Katt Williams has made a career out of being candid and open-minded about his craft and storytelling. Despite his style of comedy, however, he feels sometimes it’s necessary to put restrictions on comedy. In fact, Williams appreciated that his own career had boundaries he knew he couldn’t cross.
Katt Williams doesn’t believe in cancel culture
As most know, Williams fairly recently had his own take on cancel culture. Whereas others have discussed the relative dangers cancel culture brings, the Wild ‘n Out alum views it as a necessity.
“I’m saying your job as a comedian is to please the most amount of people with your art,” he said on Joe Budden TV. “So if you want to offend somebody, nobody took those words away from you. Dirty b*** ain’t been taken away. You can say that. But don’t call somebody this word when you know this affects all of these people. Don’t use the r-word when you really mean people on the spectrum. Don’t say this word instead of saying ‘autistic,’ don’t say this word instead of saying ‘little people.’”
According to Williams, what some know as cancel culture was actually used to help people who were taken advantage of.
“Cancellation doesn’t have its own culture. That was people of color, that was us policing our own culture,” he shared. “That was people without a voice being trashed by people just because they had a bigger name than them and more money than them and a better office than them, they could sweep them up under the rug like they didn’t matter.”
Katt Williams is glad to have boundaries over his own comedy
It’s not just other comedians’ comedy Williams feels need to be regulated, but his own. Speaking to The Ringer, Williams dived a bit further into his ideas.
“I’m a guy in the game that appreciates there has to be bounds,” he said.
The Emmy-winner discussed why he didn’t consider himself exempt from those kinds of rules, and how he’d work around them in his own way.
“I don’t want to call somebody something that I shouldn’t call them,” he continued. “When if I had known that, I could’ve found something else to call them. Nobody likes the speed limit, but it’s there for a reason. No one wants to be on the shoulder of the road because it’s bumpy, but that’s to wake you up to get back in lane. And most people that are complaining about not having anything to say, didn’t have anything to say in those years when they could say whatever they wanted to. They didn’t make it then, either.”
Katt Williams considers himself a legend because he doesn’t think like other comics
Katt Williams believed one of the reasons why he was a legend in the industry was because of his line of thinking. He felt his personal thoughts on cancel culture just highlighted how different he was compared to his contemporaries.
“You can expect me to have a different answer to the questions that people have agreed upon because that’s what makes me a legendary comic,” he said. “Is that if you line me up with a hundred comics, I’m not gonna say what 99 other comics said.”
