By the age of 15, Patricia Williams had been the victim of sexual abuse and given birth to two children. A few years later, she became a drug dealer and got shot twice.
Now Williams, who performs under the stage name Ms. Pat, is one of comedy's rising stars. She's headlining a new sitcom that debuts Thursday, the same evening she kicks off a six-show run at the Mall of America's House of Comedy.
"I think you need to have some kind of struggle in life to be funny," Williams said. "I've heard comedians complaining that their moms threw out their lunch. Please. Can you go rob a bank so you can write a funny joke?"
In "The Ms. Pat Show," streaming on BET Plus, the 49-year-old comic plays Patricia Carson, a slightly fictionalized version of herself — a convicted felon doing stand-up on the road while her husband manages the household. She returns to their Indiana home often enough to provide the kind of tough love Roseanne Barr was pounding out in the '90s. Their living room even resembles the one the Conners bickered in on "Roseanne."
"We only stay married because you have good health care," she tells her husband in her version of flirting. To teach her kids to be ready for anything, she hurls fruit at them when they least expect it. If there was a swear jar in the kitchen, it'd be overflowing with $100 bills.
But the character is also devoted to her children. In the first episode's most striking scene, she tears into a school principal who's trying to discipline her daughter — and mistakes Pat for a single mom.
"I don't do cartwheels or dance. I tell the truth," Williams said last month during a phone interview from Atlanta. "I do a bit on stage about my relationship with my granddaughter. After one performance, a woman came up to me and said, 'Omigod, you really talk to your granddaughter like that?' Of course. And behind closed doors, so do you. I'm just bold enough to bring it to the stage."
Williams' approach may have been a little too real for major platforms.
