Interview: Marlon Wayans Talks Working Through Pain In “Good Grief”

There’s something to be said for a comedian that can truly bare it all onstage. Usually, when a comedian tells you a story actually happened, something’s being embellished for comic effect. It’s a concession to get a laugh. But with Marlon Wayans in his new special, Good Grief, it is dripping with authenticity, beyond what you would typically see. That’s because his latest hour deals with a very serious topic: Grieving.

Over the course of the last four years, Wayans’ has lost both his parents, and also he estimates around 60 of his friends. This caused a few year period where Wayans’ was “basically living in hospitals,” he says. Everybody copes with these things in a different way. When you’re a comedian, the thing that you do best is get up on a stage and share what you’re going through in life - both good and bad - and try to find a way to find the humor in that.

That’s what Marlon Wayans’ does here. He honors in parents in a fitting tribute that - towards the end - has him start tearing up in front of the ever-supportive crowd of fans. But of course, like any great comedian, he also finds the wealth of comedic material that a special dedicated to his parents can bring. Early on, there’s a bit about having to change his father’s diaper - and the horror of if he had to change his mother’s diaper - that immediately tells you what sort of balancing act lies before Marlon Wayans with this hour.

That balancing act one that he handles dutifully and brings full circle with one last great joke that his mom wanted to pull on her deathbed. There is humor to be found within the pain, which is something that Wayans proves. Most interesting is that he reverse engineered his career. Of course, he grew up in a very funny family that features no shortage of successful comedians, including brothers Keenan Ivory, Damon, and Shawn. He only did stand-up a handful of times before he hung up the mic for twenty years after being heckled by Chris Rock early on. During that time, the audience got to know him through sketch - like In Living Color - as a sitcom actor - on The Wayans Bros. and Marlon - and in films - like Scary Movie and White Chicks. Later, he found his way back to stand-up, and has put out four specials in six years. Despite his time away, his latest special proves that he is at the top of his game as not just a stand-up, but as a storyteller onstage. Good Grief is proof of this.

Such a confessional special about family and relationships - in turn - led to a very confessional interview between Marlon Wayans and myself. As we talked over Zoom earlier this week, Wayans spoke candidly about his approach to comedy and his joke construction, but also his family, relationships, being a father, and how he is trying to enjoy life the best he can.

If you'd like to listen to this interview, you can check out the conversation below as part of the 800 Pound Gorilla Album of the Week Podcast wherever you get your podcasts!

This is the fourth special you’ve done in six years. And it’s even crazier that you stepped away from stand-up for as long as you had. How long does it take for you to feel like you hit that stride again? 

Well, I never really hit it. When I first started doing stand-up, I quit early. I did it about - I don’t know - sixty times over the course of two or three years. I’d never stick to the same set. All of my friends would be like “You’re crazy. What’re you doing? Stand-up is not about creating new stuff. Stand-up is about perfecting five minutes at a time.” And I was like “That’s not how I want to do it. I want to try new stuff.” So I just gave myself a lot of anxiety when it came to stand-up. I just kept coming up with new stuff, because I get bored with material.

And then when I came back to stand-up - my whole career has been reverse engineered and ass backwards - after Chris Rock heckled me and I quit for twenty years… When I got the balls to come back to stand-up, one I did a movie called Behind the Smile that my brother Damon directed and I had to play a comedian, and I kind of got bit by the bug. And then I got the role of Richard Pryor. And I was like “If I’m gonna be a great… If I have to play a great, then I’ve got to get my ass back onstage to be a great comedian.” That initially brought me back to the stage, but then the movie went away. But then I had to feed my family and the acting thing wasn’t enough. It was too far between movies. And I was like “I’m gonna start doing stand-up.” I started out wanting to play a great, and then I was like “I’m gonna be a great.”

So then once I started doing stand-up - because I was already a writer. I had written movies, created my own TV show, I’ve written sketch, I’ve produced TV, produced movies. So I’m a writer, I’m a producer, I’m an actor, I can do characters. And I come from theater. Now when I get to stand-up, it’s easy for me to hit a stride because I feel like with a set, I don’t need five years to cook it. It don’t take me that long to write.

When I do a special and normally I tape like an hour and forty-five - which I shouldn’t do. I should just tape an hour. - but I’ve got a lot of shit to say. So when I do my special, the next weekend I go somewhere and I do my hour. So before I edit my set together, I retire my entire set as it’s being edited, because I’m working on the new set. So God Loves Me took me… Chris Rock got slapped on March 27th. By the time August 27th rolled around, which is when I taped my special, in four months I came up with a brand-new hour about the slap. But it really wasn’t about the slap. It was about my journey knowing Jada, Chris, and Will. And the whole journey was about alchemy.

So I’m not writing sets. I’m doing stories that have happened to me. So I’m not worried about the jokes. I’m worried about telling the truth in a funny way. And now I have life experience. I think it’s easy for me to come up with material because God is the greatest writer. Pain is the well I pull from. When I did Good Grief, my parents died. I lost 60 people that I love. I was going through a time in my life. And it was just therapy. There were just so many times when I’d just cry on that stage, man. I was broken. I was just trying to put myself back together piece by piece.

So now I’m working on my sixth special - because I still count Headliners, even though I hosted. I’m working on this one, and once again, it’s from a beautiful place. Truth. Pain. Growth. It’s beyond jokes for me now. Jokes is easy. Jokes is the entertainment that I hope keeps people laughing and entertained throughout the story. But beyond that story, it has to have some heart and it has to have some healing. And I hope that’s what my sets are doing. It’s more than just making people smile, it’s making people feel good.

And how long does it take for you to feel confident to get up onstage and feel comfortable doing that material that is so personal?

Right away. I don’t think about it. It’s just what I do. I don’t wait to feel vulnerable. I just live vulnerable. You know what I mean? I trust the audience and I trust what I’m feeling onstage and if I need to express something, I’m gonna let it out. I don’t feel like “Should I wait on this?” Nah. I throw it all out there. What’s crazy about me is that I write onstage. I don’t write my jokes down. I come up with the idea and in my head, I program and I go “Hm. I’m gonna go live this and write it on a stage in front of a paying audience.” Instead of me going to do five minutes here, five minutes there, five minutes there, I go “Nope. I’m gonna try a brand new hour and here’s the structure in my head. And I’m gonna do it. Pass or fail.”

What happens is you really start working and finetuning your instincts, your comedic instincts. You know there’s something here. It starts with this thing. There’s a kernel of an idea. And if I work that kernel of an idea for an entire weekend, by the time I’m finished with the weekend, I probably have fifteen minutes at work. I keep working that, and then the next weekend that fifteen becomes thirty, then it’s forty five, then it’s an hour and fifteen. And right now I’m at an hour and thirty, and it’s like “Now I’ve got to shave this bad boy down. What is it?” And it takes me about four months to do that. To go “Okay, this is ready. This is ready to film.” I can literally film my next special in two weeks and be fine. And I just dropped Good Grief in June.

What’s crazy is with Good Grief, I was working on two completely different sets. And I kind of pushed them to the side because my mother was sick and I needed to talk about it. And I had a really funny forty minutes when my mother died. Then somewhere between my mother dying and my father dying, Will Smith slapped the shit out of Chris Rock. And I was like “Wait a second. I need to talk about this. Sorry, mom. I need to put you to the side and I need to talk about this. So I took four months and I talked about that.

Then by the time I finished that, my dad was sick. And then my dad died. And I’m lucky my dad died because he gave me that last fifteen minutes I needed to put that set together. (Laughs).

It is interesting that you don’t write everything down, because your stand-up weaves a cohesive story, in the way the best stand-up does. Do you record it, do you listen back to it? What’s that process? 

You know what’s crazy? I probably record audio I’d say ninety five percent of the time. I record it just to have it, but I really record it just to know how long am I doing. Like I know I did an hour and seventeen, because the timer is going on. An hour and nineteen. But I never listen to it back. I just have these audio recordings of these sets. But I remember what I do. If I do something really funny, I remember that laugh. And if not, I can always go to that audio. But I don’t need to. I just remember it. Like “I’m gonna add that.”

It’s just years of performing. I’ve been doing acting since I was like four, man. Doing plays. I’ve been writing and doing sketch since I was like eighteen. I’ve got a long career. I’ve just got a young face and I’m kinda new to stand-up. But I’ve got a really diverse skill set. I’m theatrically trained. I went to performing art high school for drama. I know how to do characters and animals in all these different things, and now in stand-up everything is literally coming together. Normally when you start doing stand-up, you’re learning not just to tell jokes, but you’re learning to tell stories. You’re learning to act. You’re learning characters. I learned all that shit, and then I started doing stand-up. So now I can apply all of these things that I would’ve learned to stand-up, and it’s a whole other experience for me. It’s not that I’m trying to learn these other things. I’m putting all these thousands of hours and all these different disciplines that I’ve put in the work - with four or five different disciplines - and now I’m doing it with stand-up and I’m putting all these disciplines together, and it’s creating Marlon, hopefully something different.

I don’t know what that is. I think every comedian hits that zone where they find themselves. And I feel like I’m finding that zone. I’ve found my own rhythm. I’ve found my own voice. I’ve found my own style. I’ve got my own style of jokes, I’ve got my own physicalities, I’ve got my own wild perspective. And I have my little bit of heart that I share. But I feel like now I’m at a good place with who Marlon Wayans is as a performer, a writer, a producer, an artist, and a comedian. And hopefully, they get to see it all on the stage. I feel like I’m not doing stand-up. To me, it’s like a play. It’s a one-man show mixed with stand-up mixed with sketch. It’s like it’s own little thing.

I don’t really do crowd work. My agent’s like “Why don’t you do some crowd work so we can put that out there and all the people can see…” Because I don’t wanna do that. To me, crowd work is easy. I don’t want the crowd to work. I want to work and I want the crowd to come see me do a show. I don’t want them to have me pulling from material or me using them as the butt of a joke. I’m the butt of the joke. Jokes on me. Not to say I don’t say divisive things. But I try not to do a lot of divisive topics and politics and pop culture and all those things that, to me, those things aren’t going to be relevant forever. You know what’s going to be relevant forever? My pain. Because there’s a lot of people that’s suffering from the same thing you’re suffering from, or I find they will suffer from it. Or they know people suffering from it. That could be healing. And that’s going to be forever.

My specials, especially after I did Woke-Ish, I was like “You know what? Good. I know how to tell a joke. Now it’s about the layers of an onion. How truthful can I be? First one was just layers of an onion. When I get to the tears, when I get to the pain, ahhh now we’re getting good. And each special, you know what it is, I left off on the boat and how I fucked my family up by cheating on my children’s mother and here’s what happened. It was me being vulnerable on the stage and throwing myself under the bus and talking about a very painful incident in my life. But here’s what’s funny about it. Then God Loves Me was all truth, all based on pain and alchemy and trying to be somebody in this business and forgiveness. And it’s about finding your own identity and your own purpose and how God has a purpose for each and every one of us as individuals.

Then when I went to Good Grief, man I was just baring my soul. I was at a very broken place in my life. Like I said, I cried onstage many a nights. I cried when I did the show.  Because I wrote from pain for 57 minutes. And 57 minutes in, the realization that my parents are gone and they’re not going to see this set kicked in and I broke down on that stage. 

And when that happens, do you allow yourself to lean into it? Are you okay with letting them see you be that vulnerable? 

I kept it in. I intentionally kept it in. I don’t wanna cut it out. I want the audience to know that they’re watching a broken man - because I think the bravest thing I can do is allow myself to be broken and let people see that I’m hurting, too. And yet, this is just a moment. And I’m going to laugh my way out of this until we get to that punchline ten minutes from now. And that’s life. You paid to see what’s broken. I think that’s good to leave that in. That vulnerability. And I want the audience to know how helpful they’ve been to me in terms of my therapy. Because when I broke down like that, it was the cheers, it was the claps, it was the “I love you, Marlon!” from the crowd that helped me lift myself from that sentiment. So yeah, I thought it was important to leave that in. 

A couple more things about the special. I’ve never heard a louder and more visceral reaction to a joke than when you say the line “Don’t take Kobe. Take Shaq.” It really made you feel like, that is a shared experience. You united the crowd against you in that moment, but you manage to get them back somehow. But when the special comes out, do you see backlash on social media? 

(Laughs). I think people trust my humor. I’ve been doing this professionally for thirty plus years. People know I’m an equal opportunity offender, and you’ve got to be fearless. And sometimes you’ve got to go to a really dark place to find the joke. And I like the fact that they’re like “AW MAN!” Because people love Shaq. I love Shaq. And people are thinking that, but they don’t want to say that. I want to say the shit that you’re thinking but you’re too afraid to say. I’m pulling my balls out and going “I’m gonna say that. Oh, you didn’t like that? Well let me dig a little deeper. That one offended you, let me dig a little deeper. Here’s why.” That really made them feel a type of way. Talk about his eye and I don’t understand what he’s saying. Even Shaq thought that was hilarious.

And then, just when you think I’m done with him, I’m like “Don’t take Shaq. Take Magic. He’s got AIDS.” You keep drilling. You let the audience know “Hey man, fuck you. You don’t get to tell me what you think is going too far. I’m gonna tell you. Let me go further and find your sense of humor way down deep. Let me find that dark side. Let me find that part of you that laughs at inappropriate shit.” And that’s when we’re getting to the good shit. So I keep drilling. I hear “Oooh” and I’m like “Oh okay. They’re listening. They’re affected in some type of way. There’s a really funny joke in here.”

I call it beat them into submission. I go on these seven minute runs, no break. I’m changing my dad’s diaper, balls come out. I’m changing my mother’s diaper, what I thought her vagina was gonna look like. And just the run. Then by the time you get to Magic, I haven’t stopped. Beat them into submission. By the time I get to minute thirty seven, they’re ready to listen. Now you can take your time. Now you can just jab here and here. You’re in the middle rounds. Now that they’re listening, you can connect a lot easier.

It’s understanding your style and humor. I know my style, I know my brand of humor. I go on these runs. I did it on my TV show, I did it in sketch, I do it in movies. I have these runs and these tangents, and I don’t know where I get it from. Maybe it’s desperation. But I’ve always been a fan of Robin Williams and Jim Carrey. Guys who can run on. I love that kind of creativity. 

So much of this special is about family and the importance of having these relationships. Throughout your career, you’ve worked closely with your siblings and family. Working in those close quarters, does that bring you closer or create challenges? 

I think it’s a combination. Definitely it creates a lot of challenges, but when you get through those challenges, you actually find yourself closer. So the good challenges, right? When you figure out a problem, no matter what it is, it’s when you decide to leave it broken, that’s when the problem is a real problem and it breaks your family up. But we always find a way to come to some kind of resolution. And I think that challenges us to be better. We may disagree and that’s okay. So what’s lying in between us that’s been missing? How do you bring all of this together to make the best deal or the best sketch or the best scene in the movie? So we use those obstacles to help us get the elixir. And most of those elixirs are laughs and love. We love each other VERY much, we Wayans’.

And it shows. The last thing I’ll ask is you start your show with a message of positivity, telling the audience to “Please enjoy your life.” You want them to take that away from the beginning of your set, and I feel that’s important. Let me flip that and ask you, what do you feel like you’ve been enjoying most in your life? 

After my parents passed, I went through a really crazy time where 60 people died. I was like Superman, flying over here to fix this problem. I’d fly over here to fix that problem, I’d fly over there and I’d hold a train track up. I’d fly over there and I’d bury this person, I’d fly over there and make sure that this person was being taken care of. I lived at a hospital for like two or three years. All my friends were dying. It was like someone had a curse on me. A woman I was dating had a brain aneurism. I went through so much shit that I’m just enjoying the fact that everything is okay - today.

It made me appreciate every little moment of life. I don’t need excitement. I don’t need to be at the clubs. I don’t need to be on vacation. You know what I need? Nothing. Peace, stillness, quiet. Maybe a great conversation, a cigar, a glass of wine, hanging out with real friends. Enjoying my family and spending time with my daughter and watch her grow. I’m a baby daddy now. My first relationship I was there with my kids and she was such a great support system. And with this one, I don’t have no nanny, it’s me and her every Monday and Tuesday night. It’s me and Axel. So I’m just enjoying my daughter and I’m enjoying taking care of her and enjoying watching her grow. I’m enjoying the simplicities of life. Every day I am grateful. I’m enjoying God more. I’m growing up. I never thought I would, but I’m growing up. And I’m enjoying this.

I recently had a break up with my second child’s mother. And I just told her “Listen, I’m fifty one years old. Which means, if God blesses me with another thirty years and I love to be eighty one, that means I have more years behind me than I do ahead of me. Which means I don’t have the time nor the energy to deal with your bullshit. You’re not gonna ruin my moments. Every night I have an argument with you, or every night this is taking what you need to go heal somewhere. I can’t do it. I want to smile. And every time I smile, I feel like you’re in the way. I’m tired of you ruining my nights. You don’t even know what you’re arguing about. I can’t. My most valuable asset besides money is my time. It’s my time. I just want to be happy.”

“And I’ve learned to surround yourself with people who have that same agenda. To be happy. I can’t heal everybody. I’ll do my best, but at a point, you’ve got to save yourself. My smile is important. Sorry. I’m not going to sacrifice my life and my smile for somebody else’s. Maybe my kids. And even then, at a point, I’m like ‘Alright, I did my job. Now it’s on you to find your smile.’”

So I learned a lot about good people and I learned a lot about the value of time. So I’ve been enjoying my life a lot more because I value every single last moment and how I spend it.