Charlie Berens

The character hunts and says ope because the childhood did; the bit is performance built on a real dual-suburb upbringing.

He was born in Oconomowoc on April 27, 1987, the second of twelve Catholic kids, a mimic who used to clap half a foam donut over his head and jog behind his anesthesiologist father. New Berlin and Elm Grove share the childhood; Elm Grove often gets the caption because that is where the parents later lived. Marquette University High gave him the paper—he inherited the editor’s chair from an older brother—and garage bands. UW–Madison gave him a journalism degree he spent on performance. He was an MTV Street Team ’08 correspondent and spent a night in jail after an arrest with protesters outside the St. Paul RNC. A Dallas CW comedy-news gig earned a local Emmy in 2013 for a segment on drought water prices; co-anchor Zuri Hall later joined Access Hollywood. Los Angeles almost ate him: he bought out his own standup rooms and still played to empty seats, slept in a car outside a Sleep Inn while producing for CCTV America, which killed his voiceovers for being too Wisconsin. A 2016 Funny or Die Titanic dub—“If Jack Dawson Was Really From Wisconsin”—went huge. In June 2017 a Manitowoc heckler at The Comedy Store handed him the bit; the next day’s ninety-five-second fake newscast became the job.

He moved the operation home and sold out rooms he once could not give away. As of a Milwaukee Magazine profile he was living in Milwaukee’s Washington Heights. Birth is Oconomowoc; the place claim for this page is the New Berlin–Elm Grove childhood that actually shaped the accent.