{"id":2069568,"date":"2025-10-05T00:12:57","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T00:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2069568"},"modified":"2025-10-05T00:12:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T00:12:57","slug":"chicagos-king-of-comedy-lives-on-through-laughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/chicagos-king-of-comedy-lives-on-through-laughter\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago\u2019s king of comedy lives on through laughter"},"content":{"rendered":"

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CHICAGO (WGN<\/a>) \u2014 He was a king of comedy and one of the most recognizable faces of early 2000s sitcoms. But before he was Mr. 3000 on the big screen, Bernie Mac was Mr. Chicago at heart.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he were alive today, he would still be in Chicago,\u201d said Je\u2019Niece McCullough, Mac\u2019s daughter. \u201cHe loved Chicago. He would tell anybody that Chicago was the best city in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

This weekend, McCullough sat down with WGN\u2019s<\/a> Sean Lewis to reflect on her late father on what would have been his 68th birthday.<\/p>\n

Born and raised in Chicago, Mac never strayed far from his roots, even as his career took off.<\/p>\n

For five seasons, he played the title role in The Bernie Mac Show, a series still beloved by fans today.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople really believe that they\u2019re real kids,\u201d McCullough said. \u201cI have to tell them that, \u2018No, it\u2019s just a joke\u2019 and you can see them deflate in front of your eyes. Like, \u2018Wait, those kids aren\u2019t real?\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018No, that\u2019s just how good he was at his job. He made y\u2019all believe them kids were real.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Behind the laughter, Mac faced serious health challenges. He battled sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease, for years before passing away in 2008 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital at just 50 years old.<\/p>\n

In 2012, the Englewood street where he grew up was renamed in his honor.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had that tough, rough, rugged exterior on the South Side of Chicago in the \u201960s and \u201970s, but he had a heart of gold,\u201d McCullough said.<\/p>\n

For her, his legacy lives on not only in his comedy, but in the joy he gave to others.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wanted people to laugh because he truly believed that laughter was healing,\u201d she said. \u201cSo, if his stuff lives on forever, generations from now when I and my daughter are gone, and people are still looking back and laughing, that\u2019s what his legacy will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/i><\/p>\n

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WGN-TV. <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHICAGO (WGN) \u2014 He was a king of comedy and one of the most recognizable faces of early 2000s sitcoms. But before he was Mr. 3000 on the big screen, Bernie Mac was Mr. Chicago at heart. \u201cIf he were alive today, he would still be in Chicago,\u201d said Je\u2019Niece McCullough, Mac\u2019s daughter. \u201cHe loved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2069569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[387450,308694,387451,387452],"class_list":["post-2069568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-bernie-mac","tag-chicago","tag-jeniece-mccullough","tag-king-of-comedy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Chicagos-king-of-comedy-lives-on-through-laughter.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2069568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2069570,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069568\/revisions\/2069570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2069569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2069568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2069568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2069568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}