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


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.”
She offers an unprintable burst about body hair that references her recent 100-pound weight loss. Then she dips into the personal material that is her trademark.
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.

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.
Laye, now 52, has a lengthy list of convictions for drug and weapon offenses.
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.
It was later, after she had moved to suburbia, that the neighborhoods kids started calling her “Ms. Pat.” She began to use the name on stage and, eventually, everybody began calling her that.
Williams started in comedy because she had no idea what else to do.
She had tried going legit, earning a GED and certificate to work as a medical assistant. But her prison record kept getting in the way. Eventually, a work counselor, laughing so hard she was in tears as Williams told her about her latest setback, suggested she try comedy.
“Ms. Pat” made her debut at an open mic night in Atlanta in 2002. She was 30.

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.”
But Williams kept working on her craft. She began studying the masters: Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, Bill Cosby.
“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.”
But the best illustration of her transformation is a now-famous Youtube video that Ms. Pat regrets. It happened at Morty’s about four years ago when she got into a violent, onstage fight with a guy named Derek. (What that crowd doesn’t know is that before taking the mic, Derek and Williams had already gotten into an argument.)
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.”
The house, in a sprawling subdivision, is full of laughter and love and cutting and cussing. If you spend even a few hours with the Williams family, you’ll see the blueprint for the sitcom.
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.”
But it actually is about Garrett and a small group that helped Williams.
- 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.
He had a legit job, a 401(k) and couldn’t believe she sold crack when they first met, particularly after he visited her apartment.
“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.”
That hasn’t changed. Comedy might be her passion and career. The kids are her life.
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.’ ”

