words: Maclean Jackson photo: Akira Ruiz
For some of us, any interaction with a celebrity is ripe for party anecdote and pillow talk. You know, like, “I once used the bathroom stall after Ricki Lake,” or “Agallah peeled my girl from me at the mall.” It’s cool—they’re famous. It’s a brief, yet nice symbiotic relationship. But there’s one dude out there who will never divulge the details of a brush he had with the pre-television, actor and comedian Donnell Rawlings. More recently Rawlings has reached the verge of stardom from his “Chappelle’s Show” roles as Ashy Larry, Beautiful and the “I’m rich, beyatch!” ad-lib. The 35-year-old, Washington DC native has roles in the upcoming films Legacy and Car Babes, as well as the Comedy Central reality show “Charlie Versus Donnell,” based on his and Charlie Murphy’s constant one-upmanship. Before all of this, four years ago, Donnell was a comedian working the club circuit and living in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. And when a heckler popped his gums and tested this comedian’s gangster, Donnell, a former military police officer, repped for all comics who’ve had audacious audiences.
“I was at this club in Stamford, Connecticut. It was a small venue, ’cause this was a time when I was just doin’ whatever clubs I could. With black comedy it could be anywhere, you could do a comedy show at a bowling alley or a funeral home, this time it was a sports bar. For some reason that night I was snappin’ on the audience. Me and this guy, I guess he was the self-appointed thug of Stamford, was goin’ back and forth all day. It was just one of those dudes who think they’re a comic without a microphone in their hands. I could tell that he had a little status there, they had like three bottles of Champagne and for Stamford that makes you like, Don King. They was callin’ they self ballers and players. I was like, ‘How you gonna be a baller with a bottle of champagne and a cheeseburger?’ He was like, ‘You ain’t funny, go back to New York,’ whatever. So at the end of the show I had some promotional CDs to give away. There were two guys and I said, ‘First ugly guy, I wanna give you a CD for being the most ugliest motherfucka in Connecticut,’ right? And then his man was lookin’ all upset, and I was like, ‘I don’t wanna leave you out.’ I said, ‘I wanna give you one ’cause I don’t want you to go home and say, I’m ugly too, why the nigga ain’t give me no CDs?!’
“I stood back onstage and I guess the ‘gangster’s’ reputation was starting to diminish. So, one of them grabbed the CD and threw it and caught me in the face. You know, I was in a weird position ’cause I had been snappin’ on the entire club, so everybody was like ‘Oooh!’ and the guy looked like his gold chains got bigger and everything. So I was a little nervous and I leaned back, I was by the bar, and I grab this bar stool, I was like, ‘Oh, so you think this is funny, this is nice, you think you could just hit the comic in the face with a CD?’ And I did like a complete windmill and caught the dude on top of the head with the stool. The whole bar went crazy, [the crowd] was like ‘Oh, shit! That’s that Brooklyn shit!!!’ Once I hit him on the head, I wasn’t gonna give him time to retaliate [and the cook] just hit the bell on my food order. So I went out the back door, went to the kitchen grabbed my chicken fingers, my french fries, and my soda, there was a car waitin’ out back and we was on 95 goin’ back to New York.”
