All About Laughs
The comedy industry is a hustle just like every other. For years stories have come out about comedians stealing jokes from one another, with some of the biggest comics in the game telling their horror stories about hearing their comedy recited by someone else. Katt Williams is a world renowned comedian with quite the back catalog of jokes, many of which are quoted by fans on a daily. While his style is now signature and would be impossible to steal without everyone noticing, he opened up about a time before he was a big star and Cedric the Entertainer used one of his jokes for the special “Kings of Comedy”.
Yesterday we reported on a similar story featuring another popular comic. Faison Love spoke with VladTV and expressed his opinions on Dave Chappelle. He feels that much of Dave’s style and the format of his popular series Chappelle Show was stolen from fellow comic Chris Rock. He also pointed out some of Chappelle’s other influences, including Tony Woods and Charlie Barnett before reminding Vlad that no previous comedian had a style quite like Rock’s. He added that Chappelle comedy routine is very similar to Flip Wilson as well.
Back in 2016 MentalFloss.com did a list of the times comics were caught plagiarising other’s jokes. On their list they pointed out Carlos Mencia, who has been accused over the years by everyone from George Lopez to Joe Rogan of stealing. A video on youtube shows some of the jokes he “borrowed” from Bill Cosby. Dane Cook, Denis Leary and Jay Mohr also appear on the list. The most shocking inclusion however comes from Oscar winner Robin Williams, who was accused of stealing jokes from other comedians in his 20’s. He owned up to it in a 2010 interview, jokingly calling it “joke sampling.”
During an interview with The Morning Hustle Show, Katt Williams talks about Cedric the Entertainer stealing his jokes for the Kings of Comedy film. “When it initially happen to me it crushed me just because the comedian was already bigger and more famous than me and he took my closing joke and made it his closing joke on Kings Of Comedy.”
He continued “The reason it hit so bad was that I was in the theater. I paid my money to go see Kings Of Comedy and to see my joke being there and not me was about as disrespectful as it gets in our craft. I really took it really personally with Cedric the Entertainer at that time”.
Cedric The Entertainer has responded to Katt Williams accusations claiming their completely false.
“To all my peoples hitting me about the @kattwilliams commentary, I say no sir !! That joke has roots, tied into so many other of my jokes… To know me is know most of my jokes a very similar animated, characters acted out sense of humor. I’ve had jokes stolen, I’ve had similar premises to others as well, but that joke has DNA thats over 30 yrs old specifically from Me. Cigarette hanging from the lip and all.”
