Comedian Katt Williams told Jimmy Fallon that they are not the same when the comedian stopped by Tonight Show on Wednesday.
The exchange started innocently enough, when Fallon, 50, told the 53-year-old stand-up comedian of their early careers, “I met you years ago at, I think, The Comedy Store, and you were great on stage, and I talked to you afterwards. I was just starting out, and you were just very, very nice to me. And you crushed, by the way, and everyone was afraid to follow you.”
The audience clapped at the sweet remarks, but Williams, who was making his first-ever appearance on Fallon’s Tonight Show to promote an upcoming album titled As Above So Below, had been brewing a less fuzzy response.
“As a white person, I need you to understand what I was thinking on the other end of meeting you,” he began, “because you remember that, and you remember what you remember, but I remember it was a guy that seemed to me to have all of the benefits that would guarantee his success. And he was too stupid to live on any of it.”
The host was clearly taken aback but managed to remain amused as Williams continued, “You out there trying to do comedy. You got smooth, milk-white skin. You look like you come from money. Like, you’re in here in the trenches with us? If I’m not funny tonight, I’m going to be hungry—and I see this Jimmy Fallon,” he said recalling that he thought, “‘This guy’s gonna freaking make it. I just know it.’”
Fallon’s career did indeed take off in the late ’90s when he was cast on Saturday Night Live not long after starting out as a stand-up comedian in Los Angeles. He quickly rose in the ranks at NBC, first hosting Late Night and now The Tonight Show.
Williams, who spent parts of his teenage years homeless after emancipating himself from his parents at 13, started performing stand-up around the same time as Fallon. And while his career had a slower burn, he is currently one of the most popular comics in the country, including huge arena tours and a massive live special on Netflix. More recently, Williams has become known as the king of the comedy feud, using long-form interviews to go after popular comics like Kevin Hart and Steve Harvey.
After recovering from cracking up at Williams’ less-than-generous description of their first meeting, Fallon responded with, “What are you talking about? I was just as hungry as you were!”
Williams simply replied, “You didn’t look hungry,” to loud laughter from the crowd.
