Marlon Wayans sat down with GQ to talk about “Scary Movie 6” and ended up saying something that a lot of people in comedy have been thinking but not saying out loud. He believes the industry has been operating at a deficit for a long time, and he put a number on it. Fifteen years. That is how long he says comedy has been in a recession, and he placed the blame squarely on fear.
“I feel like for the past 15 years, we’ve been in a recession in terms of comedy,” he told GQ. “I think people are scared. I think executives are scared, like, you can’t say that, you can’t say this, and it’s like, you’re right. You can’t, but I can.” That last part is where Wayans separates himself from the conversation. He is not arguing that every comedian should be able to say anything. He is arguing that he specifically has put in the work to know how to land it. “I know how and when to make an audience laugh with dark stuff. I do it all the time,” he said.
On cancel culture, he was even more direct. He does not believe it exists in any meaningful way for someone like him. “Those are a bunch of sensitive ass people that ain’t going to watch my show anyway,” he said.
The argument he is making is that the audience for real comedy and the audience doing the complaining are not the same group of people, and that comedians have been adjusting their work for a crowd that was never going to show up regardless.
His comments landed in the middle of an already active conversation about where the line is in stand up. Days before the GQ interview, Wayans and his brother Shawn addressed Tony Hinchcliffe’s joke about George Floyd at Kevin Hart’s roast, a moment that split the comedy world. The Wayans brothers told Hollywood Unlocked they support dark comedy as a form but made clear the Hinchcliffe joke did not work on its own terms.
Marlon’s take was specific.
“You gotta understand, if you take it there, and you go there, and you get that ooooh, you better make sure the laugh is worth the offense. That laugh doesn’t hit, and that meter falls fast in your face.” He added that the joke simply was not constructed well enough to justify where it went. “If you find the right joke and George Floyd’s family laughs, you did the right joke. If you go there, you better come out with some laughs, and his mother better be laughing the hardest.”
Wayans is not alone in how he sees the current climate. Dave Chappelle has made the tension between comedy and sensitivity a centerpiece of his last several specials, arguing that the culture has become too fragile to handle honest humor and that comedians self-censoring is more damaging to the art form than any joke ever could be. Chris Rock made similar points after his own very public moment in the spotlight, noting that fear in a room is the fastest way to kill a joke before it even starts. Katt Williams went further in his viral “Club Shay Shay” interview, saying that comedians who play it safe are not actually comedians, they are performers looking for approval. The craft requires risk, and the industry rewarding safety over truth is what has made the last decade and a half feel flat.
Given everything Wayans just said about what he is willing to do behind a joke, the movie will answer a lot of questions about whether the conviction in the interview translates to the screen.
