Ms. Pat & TS Madison Go Completely Unfiltered on Black Life, Queerness, Sex Work, Hollywood & More

Ms. Pat and TS Madison say the quiet parts loud — then keep going

Looking like an exhausted soccer mom and sounding exactly like herself, Ms. Pat pulls up to TS Madison’s Outlaws Podcast and almost immediately reminds everybody why putting these two outspoken Black women in the same room was always going to be combustible television.

They have very different roads behind them, but the energy is familiar: both are self-made, brutally direct, deeply funny, protective of their people and completely uninterested in sanding themselves down for somebody else’s comfort. Madison even recalls that writer Jordan E. Cooper once told her Ms. Pat reminded him of her — two free spirits who cuss, speak their minds and somehow make confession sound like comedy.

That shared frequency is what makes this interview work. Madison knows when to push. Ms. Pat knows when to give it right back. And over nearly an hour, the conversation moves from family and Hollywood to Black community, sexuality, sex work, money, trauma, Emmy nominations and one truly wild ride-share story.

OMG #1: Ms. Pat Took in Three More Kids — Then VH1 Called

Ms. Pat opens with a life update that sounds almost too perfectly written to be real. At 54 years old, she says she recently took custody of three more children in her family after already taking in four others. She admits she did not want to start over again, especially while going through menopause, but felt she had to step in.

Then, about two weeks later, while she was cleaning the kids’ bathroom herself, her manager and agent called: VH1 wanted to give her another show. Ms. Pat says she looked toward the sky and basically told God he “play too damn much.” In her mind, it felt like a cosmic trade — take care of the children and somehow another door opens.

The new series, America’s Funniest People, is expected in October, and Ms. Pat says it brings her total to four shows. She also plugs her new memoir, Miss American Dream, which she says hits shelves September 29.

OMG #2: “I Didn’t Come to Hollywood to Be Changed”

One of the strongest parts of the interview comes when Ms. Pat explains why she has stayed so recognizably herself even as her career has expanded. She talks about being on a set where she simply could not say a word in the script naturally. Instead of pretending, she told the director and producer to replace it with something she could actually say.

Her point is simple: Hollywood bought Ms. Pat, not a cleaned-up imitation of her. She says she grew up in inner-city Atlanta, has a GED, speaks the way she speaks and refuses to act like she can do something she cannot.

That lands especially hard sitting across from TS Madison, whose own career has been built on turning the very parts of herself that once sat outside the mainstream into the reason people watch. Neither woman is especially interested in respectability politics, and neither seems willing to pretend the road into entertainment was neat.

OMG #3: The American Dream Was Already at Home

That same honesty carries into the reason behind Miss American Dream. Ms. Pat says her first book, Rabbit, covered the grime and trauma of her early life. This one picks up with the climb: Hollywood, marriage strain, bad money decisions and the chase for the version of success she thought America had promised.

Eventually, she realized the house, cars and white-picket-fence idea were not the point. Her American dream was happiness. It was walking into a home full of her husband, children and grandchildren and being somewhere she could drop the wig, stop being “Ms. Pat” and simply be loved.

That theme becomes one of the few moments where Madison mostly lets her talk. Ms. Pat admits she spent years chasing material proof that she had made it before realizing she already had the thing money could not manufacture.

OMG #4: Emmy Trophies? Ms. Pat Says the Fans Already Certified Her

The two women are hilariously split when awards come up. Madison loves the idea of an Emmy. Ms. Pat? Not so much. She jokes about how expensive award shows are and makes it clear she would rather go home, take off her bra and be comfortable.

Still, she is proud of The Ms. Pat Show and its repeated Emmy recognition. What matters more to her is that viewers have kept the show alive for six seasons. In her eyes, the audience already handed them the trophy.

She also teases a particularly emotional Season 6 episode built around trauma moving through three generations of one family. Ms. Pat says watching parts of her own life dramatized from the outside broke her down in the middle of filming — and she admits comedy and the show itself have often become a kind of therapy for experiences she has never fully unpacked elsewhere.

OMG #5: Black Community, Survival and Spending Black

Then the conversation gets broader. Asked how she feels about the country, Ms. Pat talks about Black survival, economic anxiety and the way Black communities have historically relied on one another when institutions did not come through.

She argues that division keeps Black people from moving as a unified force and points to attacks on DEI and dismissive claims about Black women as examples of why she believes community power makes people nervous. Her answer is not subtle: support Black businesses, circulate money within the community and stop waiting for somebody else to validate Black excellence.

Madison pushes the conversation further by pointing out that the relationship between Black communities and queer people is not always easy. That opens one of the interview’s most interesting stretches.

OMG #6: Ms. Pat on Queer and Trans People — “Mind Your Business”

Ms. Pat does not pretend she arrived at acceptance fully formed. She openly says she once felt uncomfortable around gay women and traces part of that discomfort to how she was raised and what society taught her. Her daughter coming out forced her to examine those beliefs.

Her conclusion now is aggressively uncomplicated: if somebody is happy, let them be happy. She tells Madison she does not care whether somebody is gay, trans or anything else — and says much of the obsession over other people’s bodies and sexuality would disappear if people simply minded their own business.

It is not a polished academic conversation, and neither woman tries to make it one. Ms. Pat talks about prejudice as something people are taught, compares homophobia to other learned forms of hatred, then pivots almost instantly into jokes about menopause, church hypocrisy, hair and Madison’s anatomy. Somehow, Madison keeps the lane open without turning it into a lecture.

OMG #7: TS Madison Goes All the Way Back to Her Sex-Work Years

If the first half of the interview feels uncensored, the second half decides to test the definition.

Madison gets extraordinarily candid about her years in sex work: advertising in local publications, fielding calls, what she charged, how she protected herself, how her website generated income and — to Ms. Pat’s complete disbelief — the fact that she filed taxes on that money.

Ms. Pat’s response is exactly what you expect. She starts interrogating the business model like an IRS agent with a comedy special. What follows is a rapid-fire exchange about clients, pricing, condoms, subscriptions, stamina and taxes that has both women screaming.

But Madison eventually pulls the story somewhere more serious. She says she now tells women and trans women in sex work to have a contingency plan. The body changes. Circumstances change. What feels sustainable in survival mode may not be something a person wants — or can physically do — forever.

She gets emotional describing how far her own life has moved: from selling sex to television, podcasts, films, an Emmy connection through RuPaul’s Drag Race and appearing on a Beyoncé album. Her point is not to erase the past. It is that the past does not get to decide where the story ends.

OMG #8: The Uber Driver Was Someone From Ms. Pat Settles It

And just when the episode seems like it has nowhere left to go, Madison saves one final story for the finish.

She says a driver taking her to the airport started flirting, asking whether she liked younger men and insisting she looked familiar. Eventually, Madison realized exactly why: he had appeared in one of the cases she helped judge on Ms. Pat Settles It.

The recognition apparently came after the ride had already gotten wildly inappropriate, leaving Madison caught between shock, familiarity and the absurdity of realizing she had once given this man advice on television. She refuses to identify him on camera and instead tells Ms. Pat she will explain everything once they stop recording.

Which is honestly the perfect ending for these two. Nearly an hour of confession, jokes, trauma, sex, family, race, queerness, money and Hollywood — and somehow there is still one story too messy for the microphone.

Watch Ms. Pat on TS Madison’s Outlaws Podcast

Ms. Pat joins TS Madison for a wide-ranging conversation about Miss American Dream, family, Hollywood, The Ms. Pat Show, sexuality, community and the stories neither woman is afraid to tell.

Source: Outlaws Podcast with TS Madison. Interview transcript supplied to INYIM Media.