Joining me now, DL Hughley. DL, what's up, baby boy?
I see more of you than I see of the person I live with.
Hey, man. That's how it goes, man. You're a road warrior now. Congratulations on your book, man.
Thank you, man. I appreciate that, man.
We're going to be serious. We're going to have a little serious talk here because, you know, DL and I do a show together. You guys should come see it. We'll talk about that later. But every time I want to talk to him about the book on our tour, he said, 'I can't.' And I said, 'Why?' And he said, 'Because I'll start crying.' Why does it make you cry, sir?
Well, I think anytime you talk about somebody you've lost, I think that's very sad. But I think that for me primarily, it's called Charlie's boy. And it's the conversation I would have with my father if he'd let me have it when he was alive. So I think it's very sad to realize that you'll never see the person again that you're apologizing to. So that makes me a little sad.
So why wouldn't he let you say it?
He was, I mean, I guess he was a man of a certain age, right? I don't think those experiences are unique to me. I think that they happened to a lot of people. I remember once I asked my old man, I said, 'Do you love me?' He said, 'Well, [__] you ate, didn't you?' He said, 'You can have a hamburger. You can have a hug.' And I think it was kind of the way they were. And so it is an interesting perspective to have, where you get to say the things that you always wanted to say and never could.
Why did you do this book? Is that why you did it? Because you wanted to say something to your dad.
Originally, I didn't think that a publishing house would be interested in it. Like nobody particularly wants to hear what black men have to say. And I don't think that there's a huge appetite for black men who are talking about other black men. So we did it under the guise of a memoir, which gave me permission to have a conversation about a wide range of things. But this is, if it's a memoir, it's through my father's perspective.
And it's through your father's perspective. Look, writing a book is hard. You've written books before.
Six of them, but let's not talk about it.
A few. I've had a few bestsellers.
But this one's different.
Yes. It's different because it was really hard to mine all the things you've been through to write. Like I never wrote a book before where I didn't know where it would end up. Like I always knew kind of where the proverbial bodies were buried. But then this one, I just didn't. And it was very weird talking about things that you pretended you didn't remember. So...
Tell me what you mean by that.
So it's like weird. Like I think we tell ourselves stories and those stories start to become true until you're forced to remember the real story. And it was weird to have to un-lie to yourself.
You had to un-lie to yourself. Now people say you romanticize the past, but there are things that you...
Right? Like being abused.
I squash it. And then when I wrote about it in the book and I finally revealed it, it was cathartic. I sat there and I read the book. I read about my dad and my mom not being married and it was kind of like an open secret and all those things. And then once you write about it and you put it out there, it's like your heart opens up and the tears open up too.
Why? What were you hiding from yourself? Is it something that you didn't think you could deal with?
I just think that I couldn't have an unvarnished view of what happened. I think that you are three things: who you really are, who you want to be, and who everybody else thinks you are. But writing a book like this makes you have to meet all those same people. They have to have a symbiosis that you never really had to have, a reconciliation that never really had to be had before. In a functional life, you could just be disjointed and do all these things and never have to have a meeting of the mind. But when you're trying to coalesce around a story, it becomes more difficult because they have to have some level of symbiosis. And I don't think that I ever had an occasion to have to talk to myself in a sobering way, especially in the creative process like this. So it was an interesting muscle. I didn't necessarily know I had one.
So all those people you said you had to meet, you mean all the different personalities that you are?
Sure, sure. Yeah. I would say that when you're a kid, your scope is so limited and so you have a smaller reservoir to draw from. Like there are just things you don't know because you haven't experienced them. And when you get older, you have a wider palette, a wider continuum of experiences, but you try to forget, or at least I did try to forget, all the things that got you there. It's almost like graduating from college but forgetting elementary.
Were you mad at your dad?
No, never. But he would have never known that. No, I wasn't mad at him. I was mad that he wasn't my biological father, as if that's such an unreasonable thing. Like I could have gone my entire life without finding out he wasn't my father. But I think that people put the onus of their truth on you and they feel like because they felt it necessary that you would too. But I could have lived my whole life living a lie. Like a lot of lives are so much more comfortable. So I could have lived my whole life not knowing that. But I distinctly remember that when I found out he wasn't my father, I resented him for not being my father. I could say that to the degree that that was reasonable. I was angry at him for not being my father.
You were angry at him for not being... You know, so many of us have a very similar story, DL. And I think that's from people who were of a certain age. Because I remember when I was a kid and I always thought that my sister's dad, when I was really young, was my dad because my name was Lemon, but that's not really my dad. My dad is not a Lemon.
Yeah, it's always a story. And so I'm really, I mean, I am Don Lemon, but my real name should be Richardson.
Right. So I remember one of my earliest memories was me wanting to talk to my sister's dad on the phone. He lived in California and we lived in Louisiana. And I said, 'I want to talk to him.' And they wouldn't let me talk to him. And then my sisters, they were little. We were tiny. God, I couldn't have been four years old, maybe four or five. And they said, 'He's not your dad.' They said, 'Who's your dad?' They said, 'Mr. Richardson is your dad.' And I was like, 'Oh, wow.' And my sisters, they were messy as fuck. They said, 'Why don't you pick up the phone and call him?' Right? So I picked up the phone and I called at the office because they worked together, right? And I called him. I said, 'Mom, let me speak to Mr. Richardson.' She said, 'Okay.' She handed the phone to him and I said, 'Hey, daddy.' And I could hear him going, 'He said, Hey, daddy, to me.' And so it was like this secret, but you know, back then it was a big deal. Now I really don't care. And so same thing for you, like he was your dad, right?
Well, you know what? I think that so my father wasn't my father. And the funny thing about it is that my mother, I would say that my biological father was the love of her life. Yeah, it had to be hardcore to raise the physical manifestation and an actual representation of the love of another man, but you have to raise him and protect him and do the best you can. So what I always felt, and I didn't necessarily know that until I found out he wasn't my father, but in addition to the resentment I felt for him, I thought how I think my father loved me in addition to the confines of what they were able to receive generationally. Imagine raising the living, breathing actualization of the love of your love's life. And he didn't hit me. He wasn't cruel. And I think he really just did the best he could do. And I think it's almost like a rock in the middle of a storm. Like if you're in the middle of a storm, a rock didn't judge you. It's not angry. It's not happy. It's solid. It just stops you from being washed away. And I think for a large part of my life, he felt like that.
Yeah. My real dad was the love of my mom's life. And my stepdad knew it, I think. And because I was him, he just treated me like a king, right? If I wanted a car, he got me a car. If I needed money, he gave me money. Because he knew if he loved me and I was taken care of, my mom would love him and he would be taken care of. Is that weird?
I wish my old man would have done that. No, I think my father loved me as much as he could, as hard as he could. And I think that's enough. Like I think that there are people in life who are cactuses and some people are roses. Roses need sunshine and light and nutrients. Cactuses just need a little bit. And I think my father gave me, I literally think he did the best he could do.
Do you think that you became a comedian because of, was there some pain in it or like you had to cover something with laughter or with...
I don't know that anybody becomes any kind of artist unless there is pain, right? I don't think anybody becomes anything because art is the most human expression of existence, right? And how do you do that without pain? We know pain before we know love. Like when you were born into this earth, when you were born, they slap you before they hug you, right? So I think that pain is the most common expression of art.
You know, DL, many people don't see this side of you. So I get to see this side of you. And look, people, y'all think DL's a hard ass. He's always telling people where to go and f off and whatever. But you know, you got your big heart. You're a big teddy bear. You know that, right?
