The Tragic Truth About Katt Williams
It's said that comics often create comedy to combat personal pain. When it comes to hard times, comedian Katt Williams knows all too well how difficult life can be. In 2013, he told Ebony that regardless of what is happening in his life at the moment, his work needs to move forward because everyone has issues to deal with.
"The only thing that keeps me afloat is that I know that other than death, anything that they bring towards me, I'm going to turn it into comedy," he told the outlet. "And I'm going to deliver it to my fans so that the message gets across. So I look at [hard times] as a movie. The character's supposed to get beat up throughout the movie, as long as he's the hero at the end. And that's where we are now."
From a bumpy childhood to encounters with the law, Williams hasn't had it easy at any point in his life. Even with his celebrity status, Katt Williams has had battles.
Williams was homeless as a teenager
Even as a kid, Katt Williams didn't have it easy. He chose to emancipate from his parents when he was a teenager and even stopped going to school, per GQ. "I had already read a hundred books by the time I was 4 years old," he told the outlet. "I was homeless as a teenager — I didn't graduate from high school. I found out my IQ, and then I was done."
Per The New York Post, Williams' emancipation happened when he was 13 years old. At that point, he hitchhiked from his home in Cincinnati to Florida. Eventually, Williams ended up in Los Angeles. Director Marcus Raboy told the outlet that when the casting director for "Friday After Next" met Williams, he was homeless and living out of his car.
As it turns out, the nomadic nature of his youth suited his work as a touring comic, per Recordnet.com. Williams told the outlet that reading voraciously as a kid and seeing how other people led adventurous lives inspired him to do that, too. Further, he told Recordnet that, looking back, his childhood home wasn't awful — he just knew that things weren't going to work. "Cincinnati always held a special place in my heart," he told the outlet. "To go back and be famous ... that was a big deal to me. It's a memory I won't forget."
Kat Williams has had trouble with the law
In addition to his fame for truthtelling and comedy, Katt Williams has made many headlines through the years for a series of legal troubles. He has been arrested or questioned by the police over a dozen times since the early 2000s, per The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Some of his legal issues have included criminal trespass and burglary, intimidating a witness, stealing a photographer's camera with Suge Knight, and a few fights.
For Williams, 2016 was a particularly tumultuous time. He was arrested multiple times and even banished from two counties in Georgia, per The Dayton Daily News. After his March 2016 arrest, he made a statement to the media upon his release. "I am just like most Christians, under daily attack, but somehow holding up well," he said to Channel 2 Action News, via the AJC. "God's grace is wonderful ... we will have our day in court and we will be exonerated."
He lost custody of his daughter
On November 19, 2011, TMZ reported that Katt Williams had lost custody of his adopted daughter Leanne. Crystal McGhee won custody at the time and only gave Williams visitation rights and alternate weekends, according to the outlet. It was believed at the time that they shared the parental rights, but it was only after that custody was lost that people found out what really happened.
According to BET, custody was granted to McGhee after Williams missed his court date. Per the outlet, McGhee was actually a former nanny who had worked for Williams and had no ties to Leanne whatsoever. Paperwork also alleged that McGhee tried to get custody of Leanne in order to get government funding, via BET.
Williams has ten children, nine of whom are adopted. He told Howard Stern in 2006 that he promised himself to help people when he got famous, which is why he adopted so many kids.
WIlliams has had a number of partners
Before he had ten kids, Katt Williams was married. His first wife Quadirah Locus had several children before they got married and those are the kids Williams ended up adopting, per The Sun. The two had their son Micah together, so Williams' adopted kids are Micah's half-siblings.
After his marriage to Locus, Williams was allegedly in a relationship with Eboni Gray. The two entered into a domestic partnership from 2010 to 2011, and in 2016, Gray filed for annulment, according to TMZ. Williams, however, denies the romantic relationship ever happened, per The Sun. His other high-profile relationships have included Jhonni Blaze, Arica Kane, Hazel-E, and Maryse Selit.
On the concept of marriage, Williams told the Club Shay Shay podcast in January 2024, "Most people that are not married is because they're afraid of commitment. It's not like that for me. The whole time I wanted to be married I had kids, so I had to try to fill my wife's place before she got there."
He had an onstage meltdown in 2012
When a heckling audience at a Denver show wouldn't let up in November 2012, Katt Williams had enough. According to The Denver Post, Williams leapt off the stage of the Wells Fargo Theatre and into the audience. After the show started late, Williams got on stage and started doing odd things like taking his shirt off and even spitting on a heckler he asked to come on stage, the outlet said.
"He just snapped," audience member Margaret Smith told the post. "Everybody started calling him 'Crack Williams' because he was running around the stage like he was high on meth or crack or something." The outlet also noted that Williams told the audience when he was done that they'd all be getting refunds.
A class action lawsuit was even filed by Brian Herline and the other audience members against Williams and Live Nation after the meltdown, per TMZ. The suit sought unspecified damages after Williams' abrupt performance that was interrupted by his onstage behavior and jump into the audience.