Bernie Mac had been one of our favorite comedians when David Rensin did the Playboy Interview with him in December 2004. After Mac’s lamentably premature death, we started to re-read the interview, and we shocked at how it began. "Some celebrities show up for interviews with an entourage,’’ wrote Rensin. "Bernie Mac shows up with medical equipment. After a hospital stay and three weeks flat on his back fighting a case of pneumonia, the comedian turned actor is having trouble breathing and is tethered by a tube to a nearby oxygen tank. A lesser man might have taken the day off. Not Mac. . . .When you’ve been through what he has, a bout of pneumonia is no big deal.’’
"I’ve never been sick in my life before,’’ Mac said early in the interview. "Forty-six years of playing sports, humbugging, football, baseball, basketball, never had nothing broken. Never was in the hospital. I was hospitalized about 2:30 last Thursday morning. . . and they told me I got pneumonia. . . . It was tough. The only thing you can do with pneumonia is what I’m doing—sitting down and talking to you.’’
Rensin also asked Mac what he hoped people would remember him. "I want them to say that Bernie gave his best every damn day.’’ Well, it looked that way from here.
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