Bernie Mac’s Daughter Didn’t Always Appreciate Being Part of His Act
A lot of comedians tell stories about family members in their act. Joan Rivers always joked about her husband, Edgar (“Before we make love, my husband takes a pain killer”). John Mulaney called out his cold-blooded father for not buying French fries for his children at McDonald’s. And Bernie Mac’s jokes about being a dad and taking care of his sister’s kids turned into the basis of his popular sitcom. But family members don’t always appreciate having their lives turned into punchlines.
Mac’s daughter, Je'Niece McCullough, talked to Tiffany Haddish about being stand-up fodder in the VICE docuseries Black Comedy in America. In a clip shared by PEOPLE, McCullough explained that her feelings about being part of the comedy act changed as she was growing up. “When I was younger, I enjoyed it,” said McCullough, now 46. “It was like, ‘Oh, look, my daddy’s onstage, yay! Go daddy!’”
But what about the bit about her fight with a boyfriend? “As I got older and the jokes got more personal, I was like, ‘Wait a minute. Hold on. Hold on. Um, sir?’”
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It’s tricky territory — and not the first time family members have objected to the way they’re portrayed on a comedy stage. A classic Maria Bamford bit imitated her mother recommending a little mascara before she went out: “‘Honey, when you don’t wear makeup, you look mentally ill.’ So now when I go home I’m certain to wear thick green eye shadow and a line of lipstick around my lips. ‘Baby look pretty now, mommy?’”
Bamford’s impression of her mom was a standard character in her act. But “quite a bit of that is not exactly what I say,” Marilyn Bamford told NPR. “The one I think about was the one where she has me saying, ‘When you don’t wear lipstick you look mentally ill.’ She and I have gone back and forth on that because I know I didn’t say it that way. I said you looked depressed. I mean that’s my memory of it. On the other hand, she remembers what she remembers.”
Can comedy contribute to family communication? Sometimes. “I’ve recognized that when she talks about things in her comedy that those are issues for her, some issue that she’s been interested in. It helps us to understand one another,” explained Marilyn Bamford. “But I know there are times where I’ve chosen not to discuss it.”
McCullough doesn’t hold grudges against her late father, holding up herself and her baby as Bernie Mac’s legacy. She says he told collaborators on his final projects like Madagascar 2 that “This is for my grandbaby.”
“For him,” she explained in Black Comedy in America, “family was everything.”
