“I’m doing a new exercise today, so don’t take no offense,” Tiffany Haddish announces at the start of our interview (conducted over Zoom before the SAG-AFTRA strike). “But I want to see how I communicate with my eyeballs looking at the back of my eyelids.”
And true to her word, for most of the interview, she kept her eyes closed. It was a first for me. But for some reason it worked. Maybe it was because Haddish is so effortlessly charming and talented or because it is something that her character Danner (formerly a police detective, now on her own) on Apple TV’s brilliant “The Afterparty,” would do. Especially if she had a case to solve.
This week’s episode of “The Afterparty” is entirely devoted to Haddish’s Danner. As is the case with the rest of the show, each episode takes on the look and feel of a different film genre. And – perhaps surprisingly – this season Danner’s episode takes on the vibe of a ‘90s erotic thriller. (Oh how we miss them.) Not that her coming back for Season 2 was even a given.
She only knew she would be returning when “The Afterparty” executive producers Chris Miller (who also created the show) and Phil Lord gave her a call. “They called me and were like, ‘Hey, what do you got coming up?’ And I was like, ‘Always success and abundance. Why? What’s going on?’ And they were like, ‘We got another season and we want you to come back.’ And I was like, ‘Yay. Whatever you want me to do, I’m with it,’” Haddish remembered.
When Haddish signed on she didn’t know what her episode would be – or if there would be one. All Lord and Miller had told her was that the new season would be taking place at a wedding, where a murder would occur. Like the first season, Season 2 is a locked-door mystery where everyone is a suspect. “I’m reading the scripts, reading the scripts. I’m like, ‘What is Danner doing?’ And then bam, I get to my episode, and I’m like, ‘What? OK, I like this. I like it a lot. Finally, some romance, some oh-la-la,’” Haddis said. “It was my two favorite things – food and intimacy.”
During the flashbacks, Haddish gets to share both food and intimacy with the almost uncomfortably attractive Michael Ealy (“Mm-hmm. I can see it. I can see it on the back of my eyelids right now”), as the pair roll around, feeding each other on the floor of kitchen before getting into some escapades in the bedroom. “It was so hard not to be giggling and laughing every few minutes, especially when we were in the kitchen. And it’s hard to take yourself super seriously in such a vulnerable state, but I did, and it was fun,” Haddish said. “It was a lot of fun.”
That sense of fun seems to have been contagious, not only with the returning cast members (including Sam Richardson and Zoë Chao) but also with the new cast members (among them: John Cho, Paul Walter Hauser, Poppy Liu and Jack Whitehall). One of the Season 2 cast members that Haddish was happiest to see was Ken Jeong. She remembers bugging him when they were both starting out and performing at the Laugh Factory. “I used to be swirling around him like a gnat around fruit. And he’s like, ‘Shoo, Tiffany. Move. I’m getting ready to go on stage.’ I be like, ‘But let me ask you this,’ because he was a doctor. I didn’t have medical insurance at the time so I had a lot of questions,” Haddish said.
She remembered telling him that one day, they’d be working together. Jeong brushed her off. “And then cut to 15 years later, we’re starring in this series together. And he was so good. I’m so proud of him,” Haddish said.
When she was filming “The Afterparty” Season 2, Haddish was dealing with two torn menisci. And while she didn’t immediately seek out Jeong’s help, he offered it anyway, putting her in touch with a service that had the appropriate equipment to help with her swollen knees and pain. “He really helped me heal my knees,” Haddish said. “I can do all this stuff now because Ken really, he is a true healer. Not just with comedy, not just with laughter, but also with modern medicine.”
While Lord and Miller have yet to contact Haddish about Season 3 (the show hasn’t been formally renewed yet by Apple TV+), she said she is very game to return. “Hell yeah. Danner has so many layers. She’s an onion that needs to be peeled open,” Haddish said. “I’ll come back for Season 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, 10.”
Success and abundance. The Tiffany Haddish way. With your eyes open or shut.
