Tiffany Haddish, the comedian who rocketed to fame in last year's hit movie Girls Trip, opened up about a more serious subject in an interview with Glamour magazine on Tuesday: her personal experience with sexual assault.
Haddish told the magazine that she was raped by a police cadet when she was 17 years old. "That whole experience put me in such a messed-up place for a long time, and I ended up going to counseling," she said.
The incident, Haddish said, was reported to authorities, but she didn't elaborate on whether or not the person was convicted.
Now, as a way of preemptively avoiding a situation in which she may be harassed, Haddish said she becomes "semi-aggressive" with men. “You hear about, 'Tiffany always hitting on somebody,' but that’s to keep them from hitting on me."
Haddish said that this is a way of protecting herself because she's found that "men are afraid of women that are aggressive."
Haddish also discussed how powerful men in Hollywood use their power in deceptive ways, which is timely considering the industry has been having a reckoning with how it handles sexual misconduct in general.
"I’ve had experiences where directors or producers are like, 'You want this job?'" she said, with a hard-to-miss suggestive tone.
But Haddish said that she stands firm when approached in that manner.
"I might get real bossy and say, 'First off, don’t nobody want to see your little dick!' I get loud, all that."