DC: My mom was everything. My everything. I am the only child. And there are no brothers and sisters. No father. And she was everything to me. She still is. Everything I did was for her. We talk every day. When things didn’t work out, she made it work out. She was a praying woman. She made things happen that I never thought would happen. I would pray and have faith and all of that. For that to be taken away from me – and I’m still to this day hurting from this situation – and it’s only been a year since she passed. And so, with this special, I wanted to make sure that she lives forever. But naming the title after her wasn’t even my goal.

I wasn’t trying to do that. I usually do some type of twist on my name in all of my titles. But. I performed everywhere around the country, and I have nowhere else to really perform. When it came to shooting the special, I had performed was New York, and Netflix wanted me to shoot in September, so I was looking for places to shoot, and I was telling them, ‘Make sure you find me a place to shoot at the end of the month.’ I didn’t want to be working at that time on the anniversary of my mom’s passing. And I didn’t give them those details. They come back to me, and they go, ‘Yeah, well, we got this place in Brooklyn, and it’s September 10,’ which is the day my mom passed. I said, no. I was like, ‘No, I’m not doing that’. And so I was crying. I was like, ‘I can’t believe they came back on and on that actual day that she passed.’ They said that it was the only place because in New York and Manhattan and other places, they cost so much, it made no sense for me to do it. So that was the only place left in the country that I could perform at a reasonable price. But it was on that day.

And the more I start thinking about my start thinking, it was crazy. I was like, ‘I don’t know if my mom has something to do with this,’ but it felt like she was cornering me. I felt like she was saying, ‘I know you’re not going to mourn me on the day. You must celebrate. You must celebrate. You’re going to do your special on this day, and you gonna go out and you’re going to have a good time. You’re going to make people laugh. You don’t do it on this day. Don’t remind me on this day. I’m going to make sure you do it on a day to day.’

So I went with it. I started thinking that maybe I need to start feeling good. Maybe I can dedicate the special to her and just do it on that day. And I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but. Up until the time I walked out when people see me walk out, I was just crying. I just kind of wipe my face. And I came out there. I didn’t want to tell people what that day was until the end of my special because I didn’t want no crutch [or] nothing. And when I did this and when I was done, I tell people what that day was, that this was the first anniversary of her death on that day, and we all had this moment of coming together and dealing with death and other people going through the same thing. And I felt like I was bringing people together at that moment. So, it felt bigger than just comedy.

I changed the name of the special from Cole Facts to Charleen’s Boy. I felt like when people see the special, they will say the name of the special, which means. But actually, they’re also saying exactly who I am, which is Charleen’s boy. And it will remain that way forever. And people will say who I am. Shooting that special is very intense.

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