How Ms. Pat overcame drugs, prison and abuse — and rose to comedy stardom

From dealer to author

The Lily News
Aug 23, 2017 · 7 min read
Williams performs at Morty’s Comedy Joint. (Chris Bergin for The Washington Post)

Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Geoff Edgers.

The place is not exactly thumping. The headliner, a guy you’ve never heard of, has the club a quarter filled and of that quarter, a long table’s packed with chatty, older ladies clinking daiquiris for somebody’s birthday. But Ms. Pat, as she’s known, takes command of the stage at Morty’s Comedy Joint.

First, she targets a guy staring blankly from in front as a Trump supporter with serious voter’s remorse.

“I know how you feel,” she mock consoles. “Black people felt the same way when Flavor Flav was on TV.”

Williams, who is 45, talks about her two sets of children. The younger ones are her “Blue Cross/Blue Shield kids,” whom she had with her husband, Garrett. The older ones came when she was single, poor and not even in high school. They’re her “Medicaid kids,” whom she likes more, “because they understand the struggle.”

After about 17 minutes, Ms. Pat is done, keeping to her promise to “make this quick. My husband thinks I’m at Walmart.”

It’s a joke, of course. Williams’s career is anything but a secret.

  • She’s done NBC’s “Last Comic Standing.”
  • Appeared on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast.
  • Her new memoir, “Rabbit: The Autobiography of Ms. Pat,” is drawing notice for its unforgiving and darkly hilarious portrait of her rise from the grimmest of circumstances.
  • Williams is working with director Lee Daniels on a sitcom about her life for Fox, which she’ll star in. Daniels directed “Precious” and “The Butler,” and co-created “Empire.”

For Williams, 25 years removed from Fulton County Jail, comedy isn’t just therapy.

It’s been her salvation.


‘So many obstacles’

She was born Patricia Williams on April 2, 1972.

Her mother, Mildred, was an abusive drunk who would be dead by 40.

Patricia, nicknamed “Rabbit,” slept on the floor, survived on ketchup sandwiches and, at Mildred’s direction, danced for the drunks that patronized that living room.

Comedian Ms Pat listens as another comic performs at Morty’s Comedy Joint. (Chris Bergin for The Washington Post)

Before long, the girls had been sexually abused by a neighborhood man. He told her to keep it to themselves or they’d be beaten. So Williams did — until putting it in her memoir.

And then in walked Darrell Laye, the older man who would father her first two children. Williams gave him a pseudonym, “Derrick,” in the book. She writes about the psychological and physical abuse in their relationship, and also his influence on her becoming a crack dealer.

What’s saddest about this part of her story is how little the authorities cared about a teenage black girl in Atlanta, pregnant at 14.

Reached by phone, Laye complains that the book, which he has not read, only gives one side. He shot her? Well, did she mention that she shot me?

When asked about having sex with a 14-year-old, he hangs up.

From ‘Rabbit’ to ‘Ms. Pat’

Her drug dealing ended in the early ’90s, not long after serving time at Fulton and meeting Garrett.

But leaving “Rabbit” behind wouldn’t be easy. It wasn’t just a nickname, it had become her identity, the shell to protect her on Ashby Grove, where being tough and fearless and not thinking too much was often required for survival.

Williams started in comedy because she had no idea what else to do.

“Ms. Pat” made her debut at an open mic night in Atlanta in 2002. She was 30.

Comedian Ms Pat performs at Morty’s Comedy Joint. (Chris Bergin for The Washington Post)

Ashley, then 15, was in the audience. She was glad her mother was no longer selling crack outside her elementary school. But her performance wasn’t exactly ready for prime time.

“She didn’t even say anything,” her daughter says. “She just cussed everybody out. ‘Get this light out of my face,’ and she threw the microphone down and walked off.”

“When I moved here, I didn’t even know comedy had a beginning, middle and end,” she says. “I thought you just got up there and talked. I started to watch other people, and I started to put two and two together, and it started to get better.”

That scene still terrifies Williams. This is not, she says, who Fox signed and Harper Collins gave a book deal.

“What you see on that tape is ‘Rabbit,’” says John MacDonald, her manager. “Her street persona came up and took over and started making decisions for her. That’s not really the person that we want to take to the world.”

‘Don’t ever say what you can’t do’

“Turn that TV down!”

“Ramon, get on this sofa and take a seat. Before I put you in your bed for the rest of the day.”

“Will you shut up! I’m doing an interview.”

Williams hovers over the stove, slicing sausages into a sizzling fry pan. She places a pork roast into the slow cooker and then, after asking for help, decides to dust it with salt and pepper. She throws a pizza into the oven. It comes out blackened.

She’s feeding her whole clan.

The children:

  • Ashley, 31
  • Nikia, 29
  • Garrett Jr., 17
  • Garianna, heading to college in the fall

And these are the little ones she inherited from her niece — a drug addict — who has disappeared:

  • Yolanda, 8
  • Ramon, 8
  • Porchia, 6
  • Ciisha, 3

The husband:

  • Garrett, who seems as if he has been crafted for sitcom immortality, his head perpetually in his hands, his resigned smile telling you that he knows this place is crazy, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Garrett did not get a pseudonym in “Rabbit.” He admits he would have preferred one.

“I just don’t want any attention from this book or anything,” he says. “The book is about Ms. Pat. It ain’t about me.”

  • Miss Troup, in third grade, not only taught her to read but hustled her to the bathroom and handed her a bag stocked with soap, shampoo and a brand-new set of clothes.
  • Miss Munroe, the family caseworker, got her vouchers for a summer camp and, when Mildred failed to pack even a toothbrush, sprinted her through Kmart for supplies.
  • Miss Campbell is the work counselor who suggested her calling might be in comedy.

Nobody, though, has done more than Garrett, a Gulf War veteran she met at a club in 1993.

“You were like, this is a normal household,” he says. “There ain’t anybody getting high or drunk. She was taking care of those kids.”


It’s dark now, she’s driving back from Morty’s and she talks about the future. She’s got high hopes for the Fox show and her book. She has appreciated what Indianapolis has done for her, but she would love to move back South, get a big house. She truly believes anything can happen.

And then she tells the story of how she got to suburbia. The family lived in a cramped apartment when they first moved to Indianapolis, mainly on Garrett’s salary. But Williams wanted a house. “And my husband is like, we can’t afford that. And I was like, ‘Yes we can.’ ”

She found this subdivision, with its man-made ponds and manicured lawns, and rode through it with her kids for two years.

“And they was like, ‘Why we keep riding through this neighborhood,’ ” she says. “ ‘Because we gonna live here.’ My daughter said, ‘Well, Poppy said we can’t afford it.’ I said, ‘Don’t ever say what you can’t do. Miss Troup taught me that.’ ”

The Lily

The Lily was the first U.S. newspaper for and by women. We’re bringing it back.

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The Lily News

Written by

The Lily

The Lily

The Lily was the first U.S. newspaper for and by women. We’re bringing it back.

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