Niecy Nash recently recalled almost being fired in her first film role with Whoopi Goldberg.
Speaking with PEOPLE, Nash recalled a crazy scene while filming Boys on the Side in 1995
“I played ‘Woman in the diner,’” Nash said. “My scene was with this beautiful woman right here [Goldberg]. And I almost got fired because she kept laughing and messing up the scene.”
Nash had an unusual way of dealing with the situation.
“I yelled, ‘Cut!’ You’re not supposed to do that! I yelled ‘Cut!’ and I said, ‘Hey, she’s messing up the scene!’ ”
Goldberg then admonished Nash for yelling ‘cut,. Nash told her, “Girl, they’re not gonna fire you! They gotta know I didn’t do it.” She added, “But I have loved you ever since.”
Goldberg said the problem was not Nash, but that her line was ridiculous.
“It was a line that no human being would say,” she remembered, but thought Goldberg or Nash could recall the line.
“The director said, ‘What is the problem? I said, ‘People don’t talk like that,’” Nash said. “ And he said, ‘Well, what would you like to say?’ I said, ‘Girl, is that your friend in the bathroom? You better get in there because she throwing up.’ ”
Goldberg said she was “proud” of Nash for using her voice.
“The line made no sense, and she fixed it, and that’s what you have to do,” she said, before joking, “Maybe not yell cut in the middle.”
Nash told PEOPLE that when she won the role, she didn’t even have an agent. She told the casting director, “I’m broke. I have a baby. I need a job.”
Following her role in Boys on the Side, Nash appeared in several TV shows as a guest star. She broke through on the comedy Reno 911!, which premiered in 2003. She
Nash won her first Emmy in 2023 for Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.