Tiffany Haddish reveals she created a fake Instagram account to hunt down and ‘destroy’ haters
Tiffany Haddish has detailed the lengths she’s gone to protect herself against the online vitriol she’s faced, which she said has exponentially increased after she was accused of child sexual abuse in a since-dismissed lawsuit.
In 2022, a 22-year-old woman using the pseudonym Jane Doe filed a lawsuit alleging that Haddish and fellow comedian Aries Spears had forced her and her 15-year-old brother to perform inappropriate acts on camera when they were both children.
Shortly after filing, Jane Doe asked the judge to dismiss the case, saying in a statement: “My family and I have known Tiffany Haddish for many years – and we now know that she would never harm me or my brother or help anyone else do anything that could harm us. We wish Tiffany the best and are glad that we can all put this behind us.”
Following the dismissal, Haddish said she had “lost everything” and that the damage had already been done to her career.
The online comments about her became so bad that she was forced to block certain phrases on Instagram, including “pedo”, “not funny” and “setback”, she told the Los Angeles Times in a new interview.
Haddish, 44, said she even went so far as to hire a digital forensics analyst, who discovered that 75 per cent of the death threats she had received were coming from online robots in Malaysia and Iran.
The Girls Trip actor admitted to also having made a fake Instagram account, where an alter ego named Sarah would set out to “destroy” anybody making hateful comments about her by revealing their personal details.
“I’ve learned how to find people’s information – like I pull up the credit report, police records. You can do that for $1.99,” the AfterParty star said. “Sometimes, I get so mad that I’ll get they phone number and I’ll just call them.
“They be shocked that I called. They’ll be like, ‘I can’t believe you even saw that.’ You did a whole video, b****! You made a full, five-minute video! On the internet, people think they can just say whatever and you not gonna say anything. I try my best not to, but I’m a human being,” Haddish added.
Earlier this year, the Emmy-nominated actor emotionally defended her decision to travel to Israel in order to learn more about the 7 October attacks and their aftermath.
“I can’t believe everything that I read,” Haddish told TMZ in February. “I need to go see for myself. I want to talk to the actual people that’s here, the people that actually experienced the situation that happened on the 7th.”
Asked whether she would also be looking at Israel’s retaliation in Gaza, which health officials say has resulted in over 25,000 deaths, Haddish responded: “Yes, I’m going over there too.
“I’m a firm believer in: ‘Go see with your own eyes before you pass judgement.’ Go over there cautiously, be cautious, but go see for yourself. I care about both sides. I care about humanity. Human beings.”