You’d be hard-pressed to find a stand-up comedian who enjoys being heckled. Most of them will tell you that there’s nothing worse than having your set interrupted by an unruly audience member—aside from being filmed by one without permission, that is. Sure, a skilled enough comic can do their best to put the offending person in their place, but every once in a while, a situation escalates beyond verbal attacks. Here are a few comedians who made people immediately regret their disruptions.
1. KATT WILLIAMS
During a live show in 2012, Katt Williams spotted someone in the crowd filming his performance with their cell phone, even though he’d apparently requested not to be recorded. The comedian then walked up to the man in question and clocked him on the side of the head with his microphone. “Record me after I say don’t and see what happens to you,” Williams warned the others in attendance upon returning to the stage. The man later sued Williams for assault.
2. KENNY MOORE
Vietnam vet turned comedian Kenny Moore was performing his musical comedy act one night in the late ‘80s-early ‘90s when a man and woman started heckling him. He told them repeatedly to stop interrupting, but eventually snapped and said, “No, really, don’t mess with me, cuz I don’t come down to the bus station and slap the dick out of your mouth when you’re working, do I?” At that point, the man in the audience stood up and walked toward the stage, prompting Moore to smash a guitar over his head. The incident caused the show to end abruptly, and Moore spent the weekend in jail.
3. RICHARD PRYOR
In his early stand-up days, Richard Pryor’s on-stage antics were described as “volatile.” One night in Los Angeles, he realized that he wasn’t getting laughs from a woman seated in the front row and reportedly urinated in her direction. “Do you think this is funny?” he’s said to have asked her in the process. But that’s nothing compared to what he did to a man who made the mistake of heckling him one evening at the Cafe Wha? in New York. According to Richard Joglin’s book Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-up in the 1970s Changed America, Pryor’s manager Manny Roth remembered Pryor getting so mad at the heckler that he actually stabbed him with a fork.
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