Marlon Wayans embraces his dark side: Him star talks 'uncaging all that I am' with his first prop...

The comedian and Wayans brother explains how he &34;tethered&34; his personal self to that of fictional football GOAT, Isaiah White. Marlon Wayans embraces his

The comedian and Wayans brother explains how he "tethered" his personal self to that of fictional football GOAT, Isaiah White.

Marlon Wayans embraces his dark side: Him star talks 'uncaging all that I am' with his first proper horror role

The comedian and Wayans brother explains how he "tethered" his personal self to that of fictional football GOAT, Isaiah White.

By Nick Romano

Nick Romano is a senior editor at ** with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in *Vanity Fair*, Vulture, IGN, and more.

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September 17, 2025 9:00 a.m. ET

Marlon Wayans as Isaiah White in 'Him'. Credit:

Universal Pictures

- Marlon Wayans embraces his first proper horror role with *Him*, after years of parodying the genre.

- The actor, writer, and producer explains how he "tethered" himself to the character of Isaiah White, a fictional quarterback considered to be the greatest of all time.

- Director Justin Tipping explains the "meta" nature of casting Wayans, who digs into the personal connections he made to the character.

Marlon Wayans developed a new daily routine while working on *Him*, the Jordan Peele-produced football horror film from director Justin Tipping: a half-hour walk right out of bed, followed by a green juice and a beet shot, gym, and an açaí bowl on the walk back home before preparing for the day.

On the first Tuesday afternoon in September, he's doing it a bit out of order.

The triple threat (actor, writer, producer), typically known for comedic work with his fellow Wayans brothers, like *White Chicks* (2004) and the *Scary Movie* horror parodies, squeezes this interview into his post-gym walk home in Encino, Calif. He keeps the camera on from his phone's Zoom app as he orders his morning kickstarters; he takes his green juice without apples and his beet shot with lemon, ginger, and turmeric.

He's in the middle of talking about the connection between horror and comedy, specifically how Robert Englund's Freddy Krueger would often say something ridiculous before plunging his bladed fingers into a screaming teenager in *A Nightmare on Elm Street*, when he pauses to say hi to a gym buddy he hasn't seen in a while.

He joshes the guy: "I thought you went and got skinny on me!"

A similar exchange plays out as he leaves the gym. "Hit me on the ground. Let me know," he calls out to someone off-screen. "I'm doing an interview."

Marlon Wayans on the set of 'Him' with director Justin Tipping and star Tyriq Withers.

Parrish Lewis/Universal Pictures

Speaking with ** after the fact, Wayans, 53, acknowledges, "I'm the mayor of everywhere I go. I'm just like my dad. My dad was a very friendly man, always said hi, bye to everybody. 'How's your day?' He was just light, you know? I inherited that."

It's why Wayans' performance in *Him* (in theaters this weekend) feels like such an unexpected departure. Everyone is familiar with the light he radiates, typically seen through his comedy over the past few decades. However, this role of Isaiah White, a fictional football player considered the greatest of all time, who trains a rising quarterback (Tyriq Withers) at his private estate, is something his fans have never seen before. It's twisted, demented, and haunting. It's also Wayans' first foray into legitimate horror after parodying the genre for so many years.**

Tipping thought of Wayans almost immediately for Isaiah. He watched him on screens for years; *Requiem for a Dream* (2000) and *In Living Color* (1992-'94) are two of his favorite Wayans works. "I just don't think he had ever really had the opportunity to be in a leading, dramatic role," the filmmaker comments in a separate interview a day later.

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Wayans agrees. "The offers never came through. People see you a certain way, right? And it's hard for them to break that," he remarks while walking along an Encino sidewalk on his way home from the gym. "I wanna be known as a guy that could do it all. I don't wanna *just* do comedies. I wanna do comedies and horror and drama and action and great character pieces. That's what I'm trained for. I've been working my craft for fortysomething years, and now it's just time to execute and show myself and the world and producers and everybody what I can do."

Wayans' new daily routine stems from the mental and spiritual preparation he did to own the character. While he thinks of himself as someone too "busy throwing punches" to pause and reflect on his accomplishments, this eight-time championship-winning quarterback is more calculating. "It was about the qualities of every attempt," Wayans notes, "the math that goes into being a real great."

Letting the lion off leash

Marlon Wayans as Isaiah in 'Him'.

Parrish Lewis/Universal Pictures

In the screenplay, written by Tipping, Zack Akers, and Skip Bronkie, Withers' Cameron Cade is the golden boy of college football. On the eve of the annual scouting combine that could determine his entire professional future, he's attacked by a deranged fan and suffers a potentially career-ending brain trauma.

It's in this low moment that he's called to Isaiah's isolated compound to be trained by the GOAT himself, who's now released from his professional contract. Once boot camp begins, however, Isaiah's mental state becomes more and more unhinged from reality. Tipping strategically plays up Cam's head trauma so that neither he nor the audience can fully tell whether all the unsettling visions he witnesses are real or just his mind playing tricks.

*Him* is some of Wayans' best dramatic work to date. There's a considerable range he brings to Isaiah, who is quiet and calculating in one moment, charismatic and charming for the cameras in another, and completely unraveled, cackling maniacally at Cam behind closed doors in another. When it came to this dismantling of Withers' Cam, he took inspiration from the brotherly roastings he'd get as a kid from his siblings, but gave it a more "dark, twisted turn."

"I didn't have one mentor. I had four. And some of them weren't as kind as the other ones," he recalls. "There was a lot of hazing to be done."

Wayans conjures an image of his director as an animal handler who took down the electric fence around the lion's den on a crowded day at the zoo. "He wouldn't feed me for a week and then he'd just be like, 'Go!'" the actor says, continuing this analogy.

Wayans also remembers how Tipping would mime a conductor directing an orchestra on set, signaling his star to go off leash for the next take. "My eyes would light up because he was uncaging all that I am," he continues. "When I'm on a movie set and you let me off the hook, now I can bring all of me through all my training and give Isaiah a sense of humor so that he can further the agenda of the subtext of what I'm trying to do." **

Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) in 'Him'.

Parrish Lewis/Universal Pictures

Tipping says there was a meta element to casting Wayans in this role. "I really felt like, thematically, all these athlete stories, and the character in this story, are essentially looking for the Fountain of Youth. They're trying to be Father Time," he explains. "Every professional athlete goes through it where you have to face the reality of your mortality. I wanted somebody older and kind of had already been through it — and [Wayans] himself is a GOAT He comes from a GOAT family. He's a GOAT in what he does, and already had this legacy."

The director, known for a 2016 film called *Kicks*, commends Wayans for the physical transformation he took on to look like a professional athlete. "Like a caterpillar went into primordial goo and came out this butterfly," as he puts it.

Wayans remembers one particular comment from his conversations with Tipping and Peele in the casting phase. "No one has your skillset. Everybody who could do what you do is either dead or crazy," he recalls them saying. "I didn't wanna fail it, so I just did the work."

Wayans, admittedly, *wants* to do that work. He chose to bulk up considerably to play Isaiah, and now, at the time he speaks with EW, he's actively shedding that muscle as he prepares to return as Shorty, his *Scary Movie* comic persona, for the sixth entry of that horror-comedy franchise. Wayans has already lost 20 pounds.

"When I'm doing any movie, I'm always going, *What is the body type for this character? What does he look like?*" he explains. "Because then every time I look in the mirror, I see the work that I did on my body. That simultaneously happens with the work that you're doing on the spirit of the character. Physically, I like to endure some kind of crazy regimen."

How Wayans "tethered" himself to Isaiah

Marlon Wayans as Isaiah White, Tyriq Withers as Cameron Cade in 'Him'.

Universal Pictures

He feels he's had this kind of determination since childhood. He recalls the day his dad, Howell Wayans, made him quit his job at a local pizza shop. Little Wayans was only making $20 every two weeks, and his parents felt his boss was taking advantage of him. "I cried," Wayans remembers. "He said, 'Why you crying?' I said, ''Cause I love the work and you're stopping me from doing something that I love doing.'"

He quit on his father's insistence, but pivoted to collecting empty bottles and cans. Nobody asked him to do that. He felt compelled to do the work. If he had to guess why, "It makes me responsible," he says. Even now, "I'm not gonna sit around as an actor waiting for Hollywood to go, 'You're the guy! We're gonna bet on you.' I'm not waiting on that," he continues. "I like being the guy that goes, 'There's no work. Let me create something.'"

His reverence for icons like Prince and Michael Jackson come to mind. Wayans talks about marveling at how the "Purple Rain" musician, in particular, could play several instruments. For him, that drive translated into performing stand-up in addition to making movies. "I'm not desperate to perform," he says. "I didn't have to start doing the stand-up. I wanted to be a better artist. I wanted to be one of the people that...I wanted to be a supernova, but that's from working your craft."

Tipping sees a lot of Wayans in the exaggerated role of Isaiah, underneath the character's layer of madness. Isaiah is someone who's been a force not just in sports but in pop culture at large, living in proximity to fame, celebrity, and money. Tipping had already written those bare bones for the character into the script, but then he began catering Isaiah for Wayans after casting.

Wayans, too, felt his personal self was "tethered" to the role. It's an interesting choice of words, considering he's a self-proclaimed fan of the work of Peele, who produced *Him* through his Monkeypaw production company. The Oscar winner behind *Get Out* released the movie *Us* in 2019, about a family faced with their twisted doppelgängers, called "the Tethered."

Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans' in 'Him'.

Universal Pictures

"I jumped in this murky pool to go find Isaiah White, and I looked up and I saw Marlon Wayans after a long journey in this industry," he says. "I went through a lot of personal trauma in the last three to five years, like losing my parents."

Wayans' mother, Elvira Alethia, died in 2020 at the age of 82, an event, he would tell *The New York Times*, that shattered him "into a million pieces." A few years later, in 2023, the family lost its patriarch at the age of 86.

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"I lost a lot of people to death and strokes and aneurysms, and it was *a lot* on me," Wayans tells EW. "And I just was there for everybody. It was after COVID, and I just looked up from when I grabbed Isaiah's hand, and I saw Marlon Wayans face down, like Iron Man in* Avengers*[*: Endgame*], just like his body. He is not completely dead; he's just broken. And I was like, 'You know what? I'm gonna breathe the life of Isaiah into Marlon, and I'm gonna tether these two together into this performance, and I'm gonna do my best work."

It feels like something that's personally driving Wayans' professional career. He isn't concerned with emulating his own personal GOATs of acting so much anymore. It's about elevating his own craft to the best he can make it, whether it's comedy, drama, or pure horror like *Him*. As he says, "I just want to be the best Marlon that my mom and dad created."**

Hence, the green juice and beet shots.

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