Damon Wayans Says ‘In Living Color’ Co-Star Jim Carrey Is ‘Our Eminem’
Damon Wayans Sr. knew that Jim Carrey was going to be a superstar when he saw Carrey perform live. That impression battle must have gone crazy.
Despite only lasting for four years, the Wayans family’s irreverent sketch show In Living Color has its fingerprints all over the last 30 years of popular comedy and pop culture as a whole. The hipper, sharper, less homogeneously pale answer to the dominance of Saturday Night Live jump-started the careers of many of America’s most beloved entertainers, not the least of which are the Wayans brothers themselves. When show creator Keenen Ivory Wayans and his now-famous family walked away from In Living Color in 1994, they left behind a legacy that continues to grow any time Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Lopez or Jim Carrey make another hit.
During a recent appearance on Shannon Sharpe’s incendiary talk show Club Shay Shay, Damon Wayans reflected on In Living Color’s influence and revealed the pride that he and his brothers still have in how Carrey turned his big break into the biggest comedy career of the 1990s, saying of the breakout star, “He’s our Eminem.”
Don't Miss
I guess Carrey’s graduated from Vanilla Ice, then:
“Did you know Jim Carrey was gonna be that?” asked Sharpe, whose podcast is more famous for guests tipsily tearing down other comedians rather than doling out praise.
Wayans, however, couldn't have been more complimentary for Carrey — while also taking a tiny bit of credit for his ascension. “Yeah, I’m the one that brought Jim to Keenen,” Wayans answered his host. “So me and Jim used to be in the comedy clubs. Jim Carrey is a master impressionist, he does, like Sean Penn, like weird (subjects), like Michael Landon. He would get standing ovations in the comedy club doing a 20-minute set.”
“Now, any comedian will tell you that’s damn near impossible. There’s few and far between that can do that. That’s how good he was,” Wayans said of Carrey’s club performances, but the success came at a personal price for the future superstar. “He hated doing the impressions cause people thought that’s all he did.”
In order to challenge himself, Carrey had Wayans make him a promise. “Me and him, after Sam Kinison made it, we made a pact that we were gonna push each other,” Wayans revealed. “So he would go on stage, he couldn’t do his impressions And we’d just yell out stuff to him. And he would do the same thing for me, and we would just challenge each other on stage. We had nothing to lose.”
“But Jim, I truly knew he was special. Special,” Wayans remembered, and once he told his brother that In Living Color absolutely needed Carrey, the rest was history. “It didn’t take Keenen long to go, 'He’s the guy.' Because they saw every white boy in Hollywood for that role.”
For Carrey’s part, he’s still grateful that Wayans and his brothers gave him the big break that turned into one of the most lucrative careers in the history of show business. Sharpe recalled a conversation with Carrey, telling Wayans, “He’s given your family and Keenen and yourself, your flowers. He says, ‘When Hollywood turned their back on me and didn’t believe in me, this Black family did and they gave me a platform.’”
Now, Carrey is one of the biggest stars on the planet, but he’ll never forget his roots — and he’ll never act like he forgot about Wayans.
