Marlon Wayans Says ‘Real Comedians’ Don’t Believe in Cancel Culture

“Real comedians” like Marlon Wayans never have to say they’re sorry. When he appeared in Washington, D.C. as part of his Wild Child stand-up tour, the comic told journalist Nicholas Ballasy that he wasn’t softening up any of his material for a politically correct D.C. audience. 

“They like to laugh. And the great thing about me is my set’s not about politics,” Wayans explained. “My set’s about me. It’s about what I went through and nuggets of knowledge I found and how I can spread that, give that to somebody else for their life journey.” 

Politically correct comedy and cancel culture aren’t real anyway, said Wayans. “That’s all in society’s mind. I’ve never succumbed to that. I've been the same comedian that I was since we first started. Real comedians, we stayed the course.”

So Wayans has never been tempted to change up his material to fit the times? “No, no,” he insisted. “Because humor is something that you have to be honest. You have to dig deep, and you got to touch nerves. You’re going to hurt feelings. That’s part of finding a good joke.”

Again, Wayans refuses to cut punchlines that might offend a particular audience. “I can tell any joke. It may take me a little time to understand how to say it, but I’m not afraid to go to anyone. I think it’s important,” he told Ballasy. “I just want to make people laugh and go to dark places and find some light. And you know, we’re going to keep that same energy.”

Fans of Wayans won’t be surprised by the comic’s latest remarks. In 2022, he proclaimed that potentially uncomfortable comedies like White Chicks are needed more than ever. “I don’t know what planet we’re on, where you think people don’t need laughter, and that people need to be censored and canceled,” he said. “If a joke is gonna get me canceled, thank you for doing me that favor.”

Wayans equates new audiences finding White Chicks unfunny with a culture that no longer has a sense of humor. “It’s sad that society is in this place where we can’t laugh anymore,” he maintained. “I ain’t listening to this damn generation. I ain’t listening to these folks: These scared-ass people, these scared executives.”

Now that scared-ass executives have greenlit another Wayans-produced Scary Movie installment, he’ll get his chance to stick it to the “damn generation” of people who don’t care for his brand of humor. That’s at least what he promises about his approach to the new Scary Movie: “Unforgivable, unwavered and equal opportunity offenders.”