Bernie Mac: Summer All-Star

The edgy comedian joins Drew, Cameron, and Lucy in saying, “good morning, Angels!”

Bernie Mac can recall watching Charlie’s Angels on TV as a teenager and admiring the function of Angel wrangler Bosley: Hang with the tough, beautiful chicks but avoid any real danger. In fact, Bosley-directed violence was, well, shocking. “I remember when Bosley was kidnapped, you felt, ‘What they fuckin’ with Bosley for?’ ” says the Chicago-born and -raised comedian.

But for anyone shocked at seeing Mac instead of Bill Murray as Bosley in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, this loopy franchise has a typically tongue-in-cheek explanation: The Bosleys are actually a storied family of African-American detectives. Murray, in fact, was playing the “brother from another mother.” A crime-solving lineage is something Mac understands. “I come from a police-oriented family,” says the 45-year-old actor, who nearly joined the force himself in the late ’80s, before his comedy career took off. In hindsight, he thinks time hasn’t been kind to authority jobs. “Nobody respects teachers and policemen no more,” he says. “When I grew up, the police came and you straightened up. ‘Hey, get off this corner!’ ‘Yeah, okay, officer!’ Now they’ll shoot the police.”

Mac is no stranger to the harsh reality of violence—it claimed one brother of his, while illness took another brother and his mother. Making others laugh, he could see, was a powerful salve in those times. “I got a reputation for being silly,” he says, although he took umbrage at being voted class clown at school. “At the time, in the ’70s, that was degrading. I’m funny. I ain’t no clown.”

Eighteen years of dedication to his act led Mac to roles in black-themed films like Friday and The Player’s Club. But it was a stand-up, standout Mac—crazy-eyed, practically howling—in a ferociously anti-PC harangue against “sassy” children in the 2000 concert film The Original Kings of Comedy that opened doors. Now The Bernie Mac Show, his acclaimed, two-season-old TV series, is a Peabody Award–winner, and he parried with Chris Rock in spring’s Head of State. In May, he shoots his first starring role, playing a retired ballplayer in Mr. 3000. Crossover success is in his grasp, and he’s ready. “Every time I get in front of a camera, I’ve got a chance to practice my chops,” he says. “I don’t want to become a microwave artist. I want to be a great actor.”