Katt Williams The Man Who Opened The Portal

In January 2024, the comic delivered an instantly iconic podcast interview that threw pop culture into crisis. He seemed to predict all messy celebrity gossip to come. At home on his farm, Williams explains why he said what he said - and why he'd do it again and again and again...

- Matthew Trammell

IT'S A PERFECTLY WARM, still-aired dusk, and the lights are about to come on over the basketball court that sits on the sprawling hundred-acre property of Katt Williams. Highlights include a small golf course, waterfalls and livestock he tends to daily. Sheep, pigs, cows, warthogs and goats mill about in the distance as he checks me the ball.

We'd driven by the court earlier during a tour in his hulking, black Apocalypse truck. "That's the basketball court, where anybody can get it, at any point. Like right now, anybody can get a taste of it," Williams warned me, and I couldn't pass up the chance. So we've been knocking points back and forth in a [basketball] pickup game to 11. Neither of us is dressed for the occasion: Williams sports a pair of Grateful Dead Nike Dunks and a purple Supreme box logo T-shirt, while I'm in loose black jeans. But I know better than to show up on Katt's court and not give him a good game.

The 53-year-old stand-up comedian and actor, who has carved out an acclaimed and lucrative lane on the edge of the mainstream, plays regularly, he says. Despite being famously short in stature, he shows an ability to dart to the basket, scoop layups under the defence and at least attempt an off-balance right hook shot pretty consistently. While I love playing the game, I possess little natural intelligence for it. So, as Williams takes a 6-4 lead, I start using my size advantage in the paint - doing what I call, in my head, 'making space.

Afterward, as we sip Liquid Death [a US canned water brand], he warmly explains that what I call making space is, in fact, fouling. I apologise and he stops me. "No, no, no," he says. "That's not how we apologise in basketball. That's not how that works. You go, 'Oh, I fouled you? My bad. I'm not allowed to push you, whether I got the ball or not. But if a guy pushes and thinks that's making a play, I'm not gon' be the one to tutor this guy."