For the second week in a row, a celebrity from Baltimore has been featured prominently on John Mulaney’s new variety show on Netflix.On April 2, writer and filmmaker John Waters and actor/comedian Stavros Halkias were among the guests on “Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney,” a weekly variety show that appears at 10 p.m. EST on Wednesdays on Netflix. They dominated the discussion for much of the hour-long program, talking about “Club Chuck” (AKA Club Charles), Ikaros restaurant and other local spots as if they were having a private conversation.On the April 9 show, Mulaney devoted his eight-minute opening monologue to a story involving former Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis and some career advice he once offered. One of his guests was Johnny Knoxville, who starred in Waters’ 2004 movie “A Dirty Shame,” filmed in the Baltimore area. But arguably the biggest Baltimore connection came with the surprise appearance by Baltimore native and Broadway legend Andre De Shields, who popped out of the audience to sing about cartoon cats and taking a driver hostage.De Shields was sitting in the front row, as if he were just the part of the audience. Wearing sunglasses and smoking a cigarette in the studio, he introduced himself as Chesterton Romero Cheadle and said he was “the cat who inspired Chester Cheetah,” the Cheetos snack food mascot. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Andre De Shields (@andre_deshields) Mulaney and De Shields collaborated previously on Mulaney’s 2019 children’s TV special, “John Mulaney The Sack Lunch Bunch,” in which De Shields appeared as a one-eyed Tutor who sang the Algebra Song. After Mulaney introduced him last week, “Cheadle”/De Shields got up in front of the stage and started singing “That’s How You Cartoon a Cat,” written by “Sack Lunch Bunch’s” Eli Bolin:Let a little cheese dustThrow it in the airLet it rain downNeon acid everywhereLiving in the fever dreamWatching chubby children screamThat’s how you cartoon a catBang a pair of bongosOn a motorbikeRide a skateboard nakedHey, kid, live the life you likeSnort an orange, coke is funGet high and grab a policeman’s gunThat’s how you cartoon a catSteal a snack truck full of hot chipsHold a snack truck driver hostageSay you’ll blow his f*cking brains outUnless your demands are metKeep sunglasses on so no one seesYour eyes start to bleedLet your devil run free babyThat’s how you cartoon a cat… View this post on Instagram A post shared by Andre De Shields (@andre_deshields) An Emmy, a Tony and a GrammyDe Shields, 79, was born in Dundalk, the ninth of 11 children, and grew up in Upton. After graduating from Baltimore City College high school, he enrolled at Wilmington College in Ohio, where he starred in a production of “A Raisin in the Sun,” and then transferred to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he earned an English degree. He has a master’s degree in African American studies from New York University De Shields has been in the casts of numerous Broadway productions, including “The Full Monty”; “Warp!”; “The Wiz”; “Ain’t Misbehavin”; “Hadestown” and “Death of a Salesman.” He originated the title role of “The Wiz,” which had its pre-Broadway premiere in Baltimore in 1974 at the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre. He received an Emmy Award in 1982 (for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program, for his role in the NBC broadcast of “Ain’t Misbehavin”); a Tony Award in 2019 (for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his role as Hermes in “Hadestown”), and a Grammy Award in 2020 (for Best Musical Theater Album, again for “Hadestown.”)Although he now lives in New York, De Shields frequently returns to Baltimore to promote and support events in the city, including Artscape. In 2023, the city of Baltimore named part of Division Street in Upton after him – Andre De Shields Way.Only at the end of last week’s show, as he was thanking his guests, did Mulaney mention that Chesterton Cheadle was De Shields. He didn’t mention that De Shields was from Baltimore, but many of his fans already knew that.Not all flatteringNot every Baltimore mention on Mulaney’s program has been flattering to Maryland’s largest city. When Waters and Halkias were on, Mulaney brought up “The Wire,” the HBO series that depicts Baltimore as a crime-ridden city. Mulaney also asked Waters to compare Baltimore to Detroit and predict which one will have the worse reputation in the future. Waters didn’t take the bait, saying he thinks Baltimore is “super great.”During his eight-minute monologue about Ray Lewis and the Ravens, Mulaney admitted that he didn’t know one fact about Lewis: that he had been accused of murder in 2000 while he was with the Ravens. Lewis was leaving a Super Bowl party when two men were stabbed to death. Lewis was indicted by a grand jury for the murders of the men, Richard Lollar and Jacinth Baker, but the charges were later dropped. Lewis wrote about the incident in a 2015 memoir, “I Feel Like Going Down,” and addressed the charges in interviews. Mulaney brought it all back up in his monologue, saying he found out when he was hired to write ads promoting a video game that featured Lewis and Paul Rudd. He said Lewis’s agent told him that Lewis was “wrongfully accused of murder and almost suspended by the NFL, and he was fined over $250,000, the largest fine in NFL history not related to substance abuse.”Former Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis donates $134,166 to the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in 2022. Photo credit: Ed Gunts.Mulaney called himself “at that time, the only man in America who didn’t know what had happened to Ray Lewis.” He said he was relieved to know that what Lewis was accused of was “not as serious as substance abuse,” as far as the NFL was concerned. He went on to recount a time when he met Lewis, referring to him as an “accused murderer.” He described Lewis as being “nine feet tall and made of kettlebells and cinder blocks” and suggested that Lewis was perturbed that the Walt Disney Company wouldn’t let him say “I’m going to Disneyland” after the Ravens won the Super Bowl. Mulaney closed by saying that Lewis gave him what he felt was bad career advice and issued a warning to the audience. “If you ever meet Ray Lewis,”’ he advised, “don’t listen to him.”De Shields’ appearance drew a more positive reaction, from Mulaney and at least one reviewer of the show.“Chesterton Cheadle Won Late Night This Week,” was the headline over “This Week in Late Night” columnist Bethy Squires’ write-up for vulture.com, part of New York magazine.“Take a note from this freak show, network late night,” Squires advised. “Get personal. This format is so grinding and draining; the least you can do is let people get weird with it.” ...read more read less