Patricia Williams, better known by her screen name Ms. Pat, is a comedian, actress, and podcast host. Familiar with only misfortunes, poverty, and crime while growing up, she turned her life around by deciding to crack jokes about her troubled upbringing. Not many people can go up on stage and discuss sexual abuse and their criminal record, but Williams does that, and much more openly, with the sole intention of making her audience laugh. She first decided to check out how funny she was to people at an open mic in Atlanta in 2002 and has only grown after that. Since then, she has worked on improving her skills, and after nearly two decades, has become a roaring success.
The comedian’s refreshing take on real-life events has made her a millionaire and brought her tremendous success. Aside from competing in NBC’s ‘Last Comic Standing,’ she has made appearances on ‘The Cabin with Bert Kreischer’ and ‘Comicview,’ as well as other popular shows and podcasts like Netflix’s ‘The Degenerates,’ ‘Your Mom’s House,’ ‘The Joe Rogan Experience,’ ‘Standup in Stilettos,’ and many more. With her talent getting more recognized and appreciated, she released her stand-up album, ‘Rabbit’ in 2017. Her first Netflix special ‘Ms. Pat: Y’all Wanna Hear Something Crazy?’ dropped in 2022.
Williams is also the co-author of ‘Rabbit – The Autobiography of Ms. Pat’ with Jeannine Amber in 2017. Since the premiere of a show based on her life, ‘The Ms. Pat Show,’ in 2021, the actress and comedian has garnered a solid fanbase. With so much success based on comic anecdotes about the hardships of her life, it becomes important to understand her personal life and relationships to get to her roots. Now, with the premiere of her ‘Ms. Pat Settles It,’ an unscripted courtroom series wherein she dons the garb of a judge, her fans must be eager to know everything about her personal life, specifically whether she is married and has kids.
Ms. Pat’s Family
A lot of the stories and jokes Patricia Williams shares are based on her upbringing and influenced by what she experienced in her childhood. The nickname “Rabbit” she used in her autobiography came from her mother, who felt Williams ate carrots like a rabbit. It later also became a street name when she was selling crack cocaine in her teens. She grew up in poverty with her mother, Mildred, who she said was an alcoholic and taught her how to steal and shoot a gun at a very young age.
More hardships awaited the comedian as she had to stop her schooling in eighth grade when she became a mother of two at the age of 15. As per Williams, her mother even got her baptized a few times in exchange for free food. Even her grandfather was handy with guns, who was a bootlegger, as she mentions in her autobiography. He even sold moonshine in their home, which was also referred to as the “liquor house.”
Williams has stated that her mother was often absent from her life, which was mentally scarring for her, especially when one man in the neighborhood reportedly sexually abused Williams and her sister as kids and asked them to stay quiet about it. She experienced what it feels like to grow up in poverty in a sexist and racist society firsthand, and it was only much later in life that the positive influences helped her become the woman she is today. There isn’t much mentioned about her father, whose identity is also unknown.
Ms. Pat’s Former Relationship
Another dark chapter of Patricia Williams’ childhood started with a man called Derrick in her autobiography, better known as Darrell Laye, who was 21 at the time. Williams, who was just 14-years-old at the time, gave birth to their first child with him. Derrick was already married at the time he met Williams, and his relationship with her got increasingly more physically and mentally abusive and very dark.
She reveals that she learned from Derrick how she can make a living for her kids by dealing crack cocaine. She never consumed it but voluntarily engaged in such activities just to survive. In the process, she also got hit by a dump truck and was shot twice. She took the first shot in her chest from a drug customer. The second shot was by none other than Derrick, who claimed it to be an accident. It took many arrests and a lot more misery for Williams to realize she needed to get out of this toxic cycle.
Ms. Pat’s Husband
It was much later, after she served her time and got rid of the drug dealing to do something more legit, that Patricia Williams met her now husband, Garett Lee, at a comedy club in 1993. Lee is a private person who doesn’t like to make a lot of public appearances but prefers to support Williams from the shadows. Lee was a Gulf War veteran whose later job at General Motors brought the couple to Indianapolis in 2006, when she started working more on her comedy career. She admits that Lee helped her take on a positive approach and has contributed significantly to her evolution. His nature of never judging her for everything about her past made her respect him even more. While their wedding date isn’t clear, they have been married for around 20 years as of 2023.
Ms. Pat’s Kids
By the time Patricia Williams was 15, she already had two children with Derrick, namely Ashley, who is now 36, and Nikia (34). She feels the closest to them since they were with her in her hardest times and have seen that life. After marrying Lee, Williams gave birth to two more children, Garrett Jr. (22) and Garrianna (24). Apart from the four kids who live with the happy couple, Williams also became the legal guardian of her niece’s four children.
Her niece was allegedly a drug addict and then disappeared, leaving them in her custody. Her adopted children are Yolanda, Ramon, Porchia, and Ciisha. She is also a grandmother to Nikia’s three children, the twins Ashton and Aden, both 5-years-old, and his daughter Ashlynn (9). In conversation with Jimmy Kimmel, Williams also joked about not seeking permission from her family to depict their characters in her show since she pays their bills. She is currently blissfully married to Lee, who treats her with a lot of respect and loves the company of all the children.
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