Bernie Mac brings tough love and comedy to `The Bernie Mac Show'

Jet, Dec 3, 2001

Bernie Mac brings all the tough love and discipline he learned growing up in Chicago to the small screen in the new sitcom "The Bernie Mac Show."

The show is a case of art imitating life because in the FOX comedy, Mac actually plays Bernie Mac, the successful stand-up comedian in Los Angeles who suddenly finds himself father to the three children of a drug addicted sister in Chicago. In real life, Mac also played uncle/daddy for three years to two nieces and a nephew while his sister tried to recover from drug use.

"The show is 85 percent my life, my story," Mac recently told JET. He used the humorous problems he had with the kids for his comedy routine, and it caught the eye of Hollywood.

"The show is about the way I was brought up. I think our generation dropped the ball. Now parents want to be friends instead of parents to their kids. My grandma and mother told me they weren't there for no popularity contest. We reward kids for every doggone thing."

The show features Kellita Smith as his successful corporate wife who loves the kids and makes sure their uncle shows some compassion along with all that tough love. The kids are Camille Winbush (Vanessa), Jeremy Suarez (Jordan) and Dee Dee Davis (Bryanna).

Mac was not about to do a sitcom that showed sassy kids and impotent parents. "The network wanted to do a show with kids talking back," he explained. "I told them I'm from a Black family, and that's unheard of. "In the show, Vanessa has to grow up fast because her mother is on drugs. She has an attitude because she's suddenly in a strange city and she's frustrated. He lets her slide a bit. But, I told the writers he ain't going to let her keep talking to him like that. Something's going to have to give. The police will be out there sooner or later because he's going to slap the -- out of her. You aren't going to be in a man's house talking to him like that. I know her mama's in rehab, but she's going to be in the hospital too with a broken jaw if she keeps talking to him like that."

He hopes adults who watch the show will see themselves and their own childhood in the way he treats the children. "I think people will use me to get back to where it should be."

Initially, he was resistant to the idea of tackling a weekly television show because he felt it would be too restricting. "Television has messed up a lot of comedians' lives. Sam Kinison. Richard Pryor. I saw what TV did to them. It handcuffs you and tries to water you down. I think after September 11 (the terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon), people have been crying out for something. We are all guilty for kids being the way they are. This show is not a sitcom, it's a real-com. That's what I call it."

His stand-up audiences responded so well to the real-life tales of his nieces and nephew that he bounces most of the stories off the writers. He recalled that once he was having a conversation with his wife and unbeknownst to him, his niece was behind the door listening. "I told her that the kids couldn't have everything because they already think we're ` -- rich.' The teacher called two days later and said `Mr. Mac, I need you to come to the school.' I went and she said, `Your niece stood up and told the class you were `-- rich.' I'm sitting there wondering where she got that from. Then my wife said she was behind the door."

He said he knows that children can call 911 and use the legal system if parents spank them. To that, he responded: "I tell mine, `You know what, I'm going to jail, but when I get out, I'm going to kick your -- again."

The show is about much more than discipline. The humor comes from Mac, accustomed to just having his wife at home, suddenly having to deal with such issues as a teenage girl having her period and a boy with asthma and a bed-wetting problem. After the lectures or spankings, there is always family love. Subsequent episodes will show a deepening of the relationship with the kids as well as lots of give-and-take between Bernie and Wanda.

Larry Wilmore, executive producer of the show, said: "I wanted to do a different type of sitcom. I was fed up with the way sitcoms are, the whole three-cameras-in-front-of-an audience thing. I just wanted to shake things up a little bit. So I came up with this idea of doing a show that was a bit more realistic: With these confessionals, I borrowed things from MTV, `Survivor' and all kinds of stuff. And I thought Bernie's situation about his kids from Kings of Comedy would work. So, I pitched the idea to Bernie and he liked it. I also wanted to get across how difficult it is to raise kids today with all this political correctness we're surrounded with versus the way we were raised as kids. Our whole point is, you don't have to be the friend; it's okay to be the parent. Somebody has to be the boss. So, it's a struggle of fighting political correctness. He thought it was going to be a piece of cake then realizes that it's not going to be that easy. At the core, it's still family.