Comedian Lil Rel Howery has nothing but love for Tina Knowles Lawson.
The actor stopped by The Read, where he opened up about his relationship with Lawson, who he calls his “second mama.”
“Ms. Tina is who I’ve gotten close to,” Howery said. “She’s like my second mama. It’s something I didn’t know I needed. My mom has been gone for a while now (after battling cancer)…and Ms. Tina kinda out of nowhere became [my second mom].”
Howery, whose mother passed away in 2009, told Vulture in 2019 that working material about his mom into his standup is one of the ways he coped with her passing.
“There’s other stories, but I’m like, ‘Am I ready to?’ This was when she just passed, so more or less, I was celebrating her. I think it’s therapeutic, to be quite honest with you. But as years have gone, I’ve missed her, like, especially in these moments. You start going to the Emmys and all this other shit and you’re like, ‘Damn, this is who I would love to take with me.'”
Lawson has since become one of the comedian’s biggest cheerleaders, even helping get his foot in the door at Roc Nation.
“Ms. Tina comes to everything, she’ll write me a prayer every once in a while…I didn’t know I needed that,” Howery said. “[At the Roc Nation brunch] I was asking Jay like, ‘Yo man, I think I would love for Roc Nation to put out my special as an album form because I want to try to get a Grammy next year.’ I said, ‘Do we have to have a meeting about it?’ He said, ‘Dude if I don’t do this, Ms. Tina would be mad. I gotta do whatever mama says.'”