Marlon Wayans: “I don’t get tired, I get inspired”

“I don’t get tired, I get inspired because I love what I do,” declares Marlon Wayans. The multi-hyphenate is currently on the Texas leg of a nationwide stand-up tour, while also promoting his latest movie, running a production company, and working on Scary Movie 6.

Any normal person would be exhausted and desperate for a break, but Marlon Wayans isn’t your normal person. His goal is nothing less than greatness. Wayans has already established himself as a comedy legend in Hollywood through memorable performances in Scary Movie, Don’t Be a Menace and White Chicks. Now it’s time for something completely different with his darkest role to date in the upcoming Jordan Peele-produced horror film, Him.

The movie follows a promising young football player, Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers), who suffers a potentially career-ending brain trauma. Cam receives a lifeline when his hero, Isaiah White (Wayans), offers to train him at his isolated compound. Isaiah’s charisma soon begins to curdle into something darker, sending his protégé down a disorienting spiral.

The film came at the right time for Wayans. He had recently lost his parents and wanted something that would force him away from his comedy roots.

This is a performer who’s been working from the start to be the very best version of himself. Marlon Wayans really is him.

Square Mile: This film is something completely different for you. What excited you about the role?

Marlon Wayans: I read the script and it was great. Then I saw the role and was like, ‘I need something like this right now.’

I had lost both of my parents and I just needed a role where I was in a dark place – and this fed the beast and was something I could pull myself into.

I knew what to do with Isaiah. I felt connected. I always wanted to play somebody great. I have been working feverishly every day to be great at what I do and I know the sacrifice that is involved in that pursuit of trying to be great. All of the elements spoke to me, especially where I was at this point in my life. 

I know the sacrifice that is involved in that pursuit of trying to be great

SM: Did this feed the beast? Did it give you a cathartic release?

MW: Yeah, man. It was everything I expected and then some. Justin and I instantly built this trust, where at a point he didn’t have to really say anything. As a producer, I sit in the editing room and sometimes during a take, there’s a specific thing that the director needs from you, so I try to get specifics. He actually did the opposite; he would give me orchestra fingers and wave his fingers back and forth.

My eyes would light up because what he was saying to me was, “I want you to make it a song. You know the words, you know what it is. Now just make it weird. Take it somewhere you don’t know where it’s going to go and apply all of yourself to it.”

I got to use my 53 years of acting experience – 35 professionally – plus the writer, plus the comedian, plus the guy that’s been through so much trauma – and I could pour myself into that take. Multiple times a day, we’d have takes like that.

I’m always going to leave my blood on the dancefloor because you never know if this is your last time doing it. I don’t care if it’s my show, a TV show, stand-up or interviews in front of a live audience, you never know, so I always try to give my all and hope that’s good enough. I felt complete every time I walked off the set.

SM: It was a mentally challenging role but it also sounds physically demanding…

MW: It was definitely physically exhausting but every movie that I’ve done has been. I’m about to do Scary Movie 6 and lose all of this weight to play Shorty; he isn’t buff. To go from buff to small, I’m trying to get in the 190lbs area, when I was 225lbs.

Every role is physically taxing for me because I try and assign myself to a physical type so I know that I’m doing the work physically, and then my spirit and the work ethic follow. Physically, I need that. I need to work towards something because it mentally puts me in the right zone.

I felt complete every time I walked off the set.

SM: You’ve done horror-comedy with Scary Movie but was it interesting to explore something much darker?

MW: I have a unique skillset that I’ve been working on for a long time. From performing at high school, we did Shakespeare’s As You Like It, and Our Town. I love theatre, I love acting, I love sketch and I love sitcom. You can watch everything I’ve done over the course of my career and there may have been one or two things that I didn’t like doing. Between action and cut, I live the character – and I live and breathe as much life into it as I can, whether it’s drama or comedy.

SM: You’ve shown your dramatic chops in films like Requiem for a Dream, but this is something completely different…

MW: It was fun to explore the dramatic because I didn’t have to worry about the comedy. I don’t know if people really understand how hard it is to be funny. I’ve been sharpening my comedic blade for a lifetime. It’s really hard to be funny. When someone tells you, “I don’t want you to worry about being funny”, and you get to live and breathe within the lines, find the subtext and intention, and you’re just playing on that level, then you can have a very intense performance.

Guys like Robin Williams, Jim Carrey and Eddie Murphy. When you take and restrain some of that comedy that they’re always looking for, and they hone it and then transfuse that energy into the dramatic to be still, they always give powerful performances. That’s a skillset I wanted to acquire over the course of my career.

SM: It’s up to interpretation whether Isaiah is the antagonist but what aspects of his character did you relate to?

MW: Isaiah is an antagonist, but at the same time, he is multi-layered. He’s a mentor, he’s an antagonist, he’s a protagonist, he’s a shapeshifter. He’s a guy who starts with good intentions and then insecurity hits him and he’s like, “I’m not ready to give this thing up. I worked too hard for this, I’m not ready to give this to the next generation. I’ve still got life in me.”

It’s crazy because the character is essential for Cam’s [Tyriq Withers] development in the hero’s journey. The greater the antagonist, the greater the hero because he has something real to overcome. There was a lot for Cam to overcome to try and take his hero’s spot, when you love him and hate him at the same time. You hate what he did to you but you love him as you grew up watching him – and that must be hard.

Between action and cut, I live the character

SM: How did you approach Isaiah?

MW: I tried not to play Isaiah as a bad guy, but play him as a human. Somebody that you care for. I love showing vulnerability in characters you would think have no soul, find that little bit of vulnerability – because that’s human nature. Bad guys aren’t bad guys for no reason. Why?

He’s a very unhinged character. You don’t know what he’s going to do: one minute he’s yelling at you and the next he’s on your nose. It’s crazy. It’s the craziest I’ve been in a movie and I’ve done crazy stuff, for sure. He’s grounded but crazy.

SM: There’s an unhinged scene when Cam wakes up and you’re in his bedroom… You really can’t predict what Isaiah is going to do in that moment.

MW: Part of that was Justin’s brilliance. To his credit, he said, “Let me get these crazy takes from Marlon because it’s part of Isaiah. I don’t know what the hell Marlon is going to do from take to take.” If he lets me off the chain and off the script, then he gets to meet the writer, producer, the comedian – he gets all of me.

A lot of times, directors just want me to say the words, which is easy. But, when you can say not only the word but the subtext and bring humour and light and unpredictability and spontaneity, then you have choices in editing to do what you want. We always had choices, there was a grounded take, there’s a wild take, and then there’s something in between.

SM: It must be refreshing to be unshackled in this way. You can showcase the different sides of yourself.

MW: Yeah. When I did Requiem For a Dream, we were young and I was improvising then. It was throwing people off because they were like, “Why is he improvising? That’s not in the script.” That is who I am as a performer.

Darren [Aronofsky] made it part of the character and I think it was a smart choice. I wasn’t allowed to improvise and I had to just do the words, but now and then he’d let me improvise. But, as a director, he knew I loved jokes and he wanted to starve me because he wanted me to feel what it was like to be a junky, to be someone who wants something that they cannot have and that was mentally a smart choice to make as a director. That really helped my performance. He still allowed me to improvise here and there, but for the most part, he made me thirst for it.

SM: One of my favourite lines in the movie is you screaming, “What are you willing to sacrifice?” What comes to mind when you think about the sacrifices you’ve made for your career?

MW: The most valuable thing that we have in our lifetime is time. I sacrificed a lot of time dedicated towards my art. You lose time, my family time and my kids, I’ve sacrificed time with them. As I’ve gotten older with my kids, god bless their mum, she was so supportive that I could be the dedicated artist that I’ve always been.

I also get to spend time with my youngest child, Axl, her mother and I are co-parenting so I have to make time, wherever I am in the world, I have to make time or make up for time because it’s just me and Axl when we’re together. I get her one or two days a week and it’s just me and my baby. I don’t have a nanny, it’s just daddy-daughter time and I dedicate that time to her. But other than that, I’m on the road. If you check my schedule, you’ll see that I have a crazy schedule.

The most valuable thing that we have in our lifetime is time

SM: What’s your schedule look like now?

MW: I’m on the road this week and I’ve got nine shows; last week I had eight shows. The more time I spend on the stage, the more time I spend performing and becoming a better writer, it helps foster the visionary. It’s a physical sacrifice. It can be mentally exhausting, but I don’t get tired because I’m inspired. I love what I do.

I’m grateful to God that I’m able to do it and I’m functioning and have all my facilities. As long as I can do this, I want to do it and I want to do it more and at the highest level with the best directors and bring my best performance with the best scripts and the best cast and have the best time doing this thing called make-believe.

SM: Are you the most driven you’ve ever been to cement your legacy?

MW: It’s gotten more and more as I have gotten older. It’s surprising. I am not tired, I am not withered, I feel like I’m in my 20s. This is what I’ve worked for my whole entire life, this moment. But I feel like that with every moment. There is no destination called success. Success is a road which we travel, and I try to run as far and as long as I can on that road – and that is success.

Did I have a great time? Did I make good friends? Can I give the audience a pure experience with this pure performance and can I allow myself to always love what I do and pour myself into every role and not cheat it? White Chicks was a hard ass movie. Sextuplets was incredibly tough. Those two movies, I slept about three hours a day; they almost killed me. I slept three hours a day because I did makeup for seven hours and then I had to work fourteen hours and then sleep two or three hours a night.

That was exhausting, but that’s the drive when you love something and that’s what I share with Isaiah, not to say that I’m great, but I have the same thirst and desire and that unforgivable work ethic. I work my ass off. There’s one thing you can’t say I don’t do and that’s do the work. I do the work.

SM: That’s inspiring to hear. A lot of people reach a certain point in their careers and then rest on their laurels.

MW: There is no period; it’s dot, dot, dot…

What a great life I’ve had doing my purpose. God is so good.

SM: You’ve pretty much answered my next question. I was going to ask whether you planned on winding down in your later years or do a Frank Sinatra and carry on until the end?

MW: I’ll keep going. Like I said, I want to do the best that I can. I want to be in that top ten. I want the scripts, the best directors and the best opportunities to be successful and reach the largest audience. I want to affect the audience.

It’s the same thing with my shows, I play all these clubs and small theatres because one day I’m going to play arenas and I want to play stadiums and Madison Square Garden. Until then, I’m just working my way towards it. If I never make it there… if you reach for the stars, then you fall at the moon. What a great life I’ve had doing my purpose. God is so good.

SM: Last time we spoke, you were in the process of writing Scary Movie 6… Are you still in the writing stages?

MW: You are always in the writing stage for this movie. Parodies, man. I don’t know why I chose to do this, they’re so hard. But I love a challenge. I love that you have to constantly work. It’s like me being on stage nine times in a week and you have to give it your all every show. With this script, we write a lot of pages to get to that 110 pages, believe me, there have been at least 500 pages written. That’s the hard part, choosing what are going to be the 110 pages and even then you go, “Let me write a completely different version of this and compare the two drafts.”

It’s a work in progress until it’s all in the can and it’s locked. Until you lock the picture on a parody, it’s always open, as you never know if you have to do reshoots or something funny has just happened, or you come up with something great that you can add in somewhere.

It’s a process but it’s coming along great and everyone loves the script. Anna [Faris] and Regina [Hall] are back and they love the script, the studio loves the script and we are looking forward to having some fun come 1 October. Him comes out September 19 [in the US] and then I will go to Europe to promote the movie and then we will get started on Scary Movie. We are in pre-production right now.

SM: You recently announced that you’ll be developing the South Korean game show Midnight Horror Story with your production company. Is that another skill to add to your repertoire?

MW: Yeah, I want to do it all. With my next couple of films, I want to do action-comedy and action-drama. I want to be all-round and versatile. I hope the audience believes in me as a performer to know that I’m going to give them something great and I’m going to pour myself into it.

I’m going to make sure that I work with the best elements that I can to deliver the best entertainment for the audience. Whether that’s a drama, a silly comedy, parody, romantic-comedy or action, I want to do it all because that’s what I’ve always dreamt of doing.

'Him' is in UK cinemas from 3 October.