Jaleel White is reprising his iconic Family Matters role as Steve Urkel in a brand new Scooby-Doo series, Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?.
If you watched old Scooby-Doo series growing up, you’ll probably remember The New Scooby-Doo Movies, which debuted in 1972 and paired Scooby, Shaggy and the gang up with celebrities of the day, such as Sonny & Cher, Don Knotts, Jonathan Winters, Dick Van Dyke and more. Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? follows in that same tradition of animating celebrities as guest-starring roles on the popular cartoon show. Stars include Halsey, Kenan Thompson, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Wanda Sykes, NBA’s Chris Paul, Mark Hamill, Ricky Gervais, Bill Nye and Sia. Urkel is one of several fictional characters who will be featured as a guest star, others include Wonder Woman, The Flash, Batman and Sherlock Holmes.
The first look at Urkel in animation form seems to draw from the earlier seasons of Family Matters, with White as a preteen or young teenager, as opposed to the latter years of White playing the character into adulthood. Why is this a point of note? Because it’s clear that as White got older and his voice changed, it became harder for him to keep the nasally falsetto he’d fashioned the character with in the beginning. So how will he manage the classic voice as a grown man? That’ll be interesting to see.
We will be able to see what White does with his Urkel voice when Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? premieres on Boomerang June 27th.
Source: Shadow & Act
Netflix has announced the starry ensemble cast for Ryan Murphy’s film adaptation of the musical Prom.
The adaptation of the Tony-nominated play will star Keegan-Michael Key in a key role. He’s a part of the ensemble cast that includes Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, Ariana Grande Awkwafina and Andrew Rannells.
Deadline, who broke the news said the production will commence in December with a release date in fall 2020 targeted for awards season.
This is Murphy’s fourth Netflix project under his overall deal. The Politicians, Ratched and Hollywood are the series he’s developed so far, with the first coming soon.
The description: In Prom, Streep will play Dee Dee Allen, a two-time Tony winner who teams with Corden’s Barry Glickman in a flop musical about Eleanor Roosevelt. After career-ending reviews, they decide — along with Broadway babies Kidman as Angie Dickinson and Rannells as Trent Oliver — to champion a cause to rehabilitate their careers. They find one in Emma, a high school senior in Indiana who isn’t allowed to take her girlfriend to the prom. A nationwide search led by casting director Alexa Fogel is on to fill the role of Emma. Grande will star as Alyssa, a popular daughter of the head of the PTA. Awkwafina will play the group’s publicist Ms. Sheldon, and Key will play Streep’s love interest and Emma’s ally, Principal Hawkins.
Grande will co-produce the soundtrack with her manager Scooter Braun and Murphy.
This announcement comes as the first season of Murphy’s FX series, Pose, is garnering critical acclaim for its second season while its first season is receiving red hot Emmy buzz.
At last, season 3 of Scream will finally make it to our television screens.
First airing two seasons beginning in 2015 on MTV, the third season will have six episodes that will air over three nights.
The series was set for a retool with a new cast, location and story for the season. The cast, including Mary J. Blige, and a new creative team, including exec producer Queen Latifah was announced in late 2017, but nothing ever materialized until now.
A trailer and premiere date have been unveiled for the show as it moves to MTV’s sibling network, VH1. THR broke the news Monday. It is a decision that makes sense, as MTV has been out of the scripted game for a while now since Teen Wolf ended and Scream went on hiatus.
Titled Scream: Resurrection, the season will premiere July 8 and run for two hours for three nights beginning at 9 p.m., running through July 10.
Other stars include Keke Palmer, Tyler Posey, Tyga, Giorgia Whigham, Jessica Sula, RJ Cyler, C.J. Wallace and Giullian Yao Gioiello. The premise of the season will be set around “Deion Elliot (Cyler), a local star running back whose tragic past comes back to haunt him at the worst time, threatening his hard-earned plans for his future — and the lives of his unlikely group of friends.” The first look trailer also introduced Paris Jackson, who will seemingly make a cameo as Scream’s first victim.
Watch the first look trailer below :
Source: Shadow & Act, The Hollywood Reporter
A Star Maker is Born
The first and surely not the last Peachtree Comedy Festival kicked off its inaugural on June 18th. This latest installment to Atlanta, Georgia, culture ran a full 5 days filled with seminars, panel discussions and driven by a comedy competition that attracted comedians from all over the country. Top comedy talent also performed as hosts and headliners each night.
Conceived and founded by comedienne, Luelue Korrell, this event featured 42 competitors at a different venue each evening. The Redlight Café began the fun with host Cassius Creflo and co-headliners Cocoa Brown and Sweet Baby Kita. 22 competing comedians were whittled down to 10. The next night Kat’s Café played host to the 20 comedians. The MC was Dwayne Jackson and headlined by Yours Truly, D’Militant. We cut the field of 20 down to another 10.
The Quarter Finals, consisting of the remaining 20 comedians took place at the Highland Inn Ballroom. Joel Byar hosted and Marvin Hunter headlined. 10 of the competitions best emerged and prepared for the Semi-Finals. During that Friday, June 21st afternoon, Lamont Ferrell held a comprehensive seminar on sitcom writing at the Punchline and Rodney Perry taught an eye-opening course on Improv. That night at the Relapse Theater, Perry headlined the competition. When it was over 6 comedians (there was a score tie) had been chosen to advance to the Finals.
Saturday, June 22nd was a full day of festivities. There were panel discussions covering podcasts, the business of comedy, the gatekeepers of comedy and social media. This all took place at Decatur’s Porter Sanford III Performing Arts and Community Center. Kenney Johnson hosted the Finals that night, which was co-headlined by the outrageous Barbara Carlyle and the legendary Sylvia Traymore.
However, the true focus was on the finalists: J Lew, James R. Hustle, Big Mo Dixon, Maxi Witrak, Tyrone Burston and Tommy Stracke (who no-showed). As a judge all 5 nights, the scoring had been no easy task. The other permanent judge, Barbara Carlyle agreed (rotating judges included Lamont Ferrell, Rodney Perry and Steve Brown). However, this night the winner was clear cut. Every contestant did a fine job and that scoring was tight, but Big Mo Dixon delivered a sizzling hot set from first word to last. It was a textbook competition performance – short, crisp bits, captivating stage presence, tags, callbacks and a set that built to an unforeseen and hilarious climax. The audience devoured it. Big Mo took home the first place trophy with no objection from anybody who saw it. The first runner up was Tyrone Burston and third place went to James R. Hustle.
Congratulations to all the participants this year for making this opening of a new comedy institution an unforgettable experience.
*For a complete list of participants go to peachtreecomedyfestival.com
By Darryl “D’Militant” Littleton
Viacom’s BET Networks has teamed with Tyler Perry to create a subscription streaming service that combines the prolific auteur’s library of movies and TV shows with BET’s programming vault.
The service dubbed BET Plus will bow in the fall with a handful of original series and productions and a deep library offering that will be enhanced by other properties in Viacom’s portfolio. There was no word yet on a monthly price for BET Plus, which is set to debut in the fall.
BET Plus joins a parade of subscription VOD offerings set to roll out during the next year or so. Although the marketplace is getting crowded, BET Networks president Scott Mills said the company sees opportunity in a streaming offering targeted to the audiences for BET and Perry’s productions. Viacom said BET Plus would feature more than 1,000 hours of content at launch.
The comedy series “First Wives Club” will premiere on BET Plus, after originally being developed for Viacom’s linear Paramount Network cabler. Viacom said the service’s original content slate will include a new series from Perry and a separate series from producer Will Packer.
“African-Americans are the leading consumers of streaming services, with higher SVOD adoption rates than other consumers, which is why we’re so excited to launch a premium product for this underserved audience. BET Plus is a natural extension of BET’s linear network, which has been the leading home of black culture for decades,” said Mills. “Tyler Perry is the perfect partner for BET Plus. The combination of new, original shows and his giant library of popular movies, series and stage plays that Tyler brings to our joint venture creates an amazing product for his large and passionate fan base.”
Viacom’s move on BET Plus underscores the reasoning behind the rich and wide-ranging production pact that Viacom reached with Perry in July 2017. BET Plus will be the streaming home of his long-running “Madea” comedy franchise and it will host videos of the touring stage plays that made Perry a force among in the African-American community starting in the 1990s.
Viacom’s move on BET Plus comes as the company is believed to be circling merger talks with CBS Corp., it’s corporate sibling under the Redstone family umbrella. BET Plus is seemingly the kind of niche streaming service that could easily tuck into the CBS All Access SVOD platform that the Eye has been building up since 2014.
Perry likely has a stake in the venture as he is contributing his own library, which is a big selling point.
“In our industry, the way people consume content is constantly evolving. I’ve paid attention to my audience and what works for them and, for that reason, I’m very excited not only about the idea of partnering with BET to create new and exciting content, but also about the idea of giving people a personalized experience through the ability to curate the content they love to consume,” Perry said. “On a personal level, this will also be the first time I’ll be working in areas like unscripted and variety television, which will afford me the opportunity to work in fresh, creative ways with new voices and to discover new talent.”
Source: Variety
The latest appeal from Bill Cosby contends that if five other women at his retrial hadn’t been allowed to give testimony about being assaulted and drugged by him, the man once known as “America’s Dad” wouldn’t have been sentenced to up to 10 years behind bars last fall for the 2004 rape of Andrea Constand.
“This evidence was used to strip Cosby of his presumption of innocence and to try to establish that Cosby had the propensity to sexually assault women,” the comedian’s appeal attorneys Sarah Kelly-Kilgore, Kristen Weisenberger and Brian Perry wrote Tuesay in a sprawling and over-sharing formal appeal filing (read it here) in the Superior Court of Pennsylvania.
“This evidence never should have been admitted at trial,” the trio of Cosby’s latest lawyers adds, calling it “striking dissimilar” to what occurred with Constand, the former Temple University employee. “For the reasons set forth above, Appellant, William H. Cosby, Jr., requests this Honorable Court reverse and arrest judgment,” the 348-page brief concludes. “Alternatively, it is requested that this Court reverse and award Cosby a new trial.”
Wrapping himself in the cloak of a political prisoner of late, Cosby took to social media from behind bars to push his wife front and center for his latest Hail Mary – with a quotation oddly leaning into Donald Trump’s catchphrase:
If you have been following the under-the-radar matter over the last several years, you’ll recall that The Cosby Show creator has been pounding this drum almost since Judge Steven O’Neill imposed his sentence on September 25, 2018. Found guilty in an April retrial of three counts of aggravated indecent assault and facing up to 30 years, the much-accused 81-year-old Cosby saw the charges collapsed into one with a maximum of a decade in state prison. He also was slapped with a lifelong sexual predator label.
“The lower court abused its discretion in denying Cosby’s Motion for Declaration of Unconstitutionality, applying the registration provisions of the Sex Offender Registration Act, and designating Cosby as a sexually violent predator without benefit of a trial by jury for his conviction of allegations from 2004, all in violation of the Ex Post Facto clauses of the state and federal Constitutions,” claims the paperwork put before the Keystone State’s Superior Court today, as past Cosby filings have before and likely will again.
Accused of bias in the appeal as he has been in the past, O’Neill in a May opinion called out the “chilling similarities” in the M.O. of what Cosby used on the five women who took the stand in his retrial and Constand. Tuesday’s appeal also hit more familiar themes of an unfair jury, a political vendetta with a past Montgomery County District Attorney, and a 2006 deposition from Cosby being improperly entered into evidence.
Which means if you feel like you’ve heard almost all of this before, you have.
As with previous filings by Cosby, during and after his trials and sentencing, the Montgomery D.A. must respond. In this case, the office has 30 days and, if past reactions are anything to go by, they’ll be very dismissive, literally and figuratively.
Even as Cosby has admitted in depositions more than 10 years ago to giving Constand several Benadryl pills on the night of the alleged assault in his Philadelphia-area mansion in 2004, the actor has insisted unsuccessfully through various investigations, two trials and the sentencing hearing that the encounter was consensual.
Many of the more than 60 women also have claimed that Cosby drugged and assaulted them over the decades with a similar combo of pills and alcohol. Unlike many of those women, some of whom were among the onlookers at the two trials and the sentencing hearing last year, Cosby paid Constand millions in a once-confidential settlement about a decade before the criminal case was opened in late 2015.
Source: Deadline
Comedian, author and talk show host Steve Harvey has wrapped up his self-titled daytime talk show with a promise to help seven high school students.
During the final episode of Steve, the 62-year-old reflected on the impact his show had on viewers’ lives, People Magazine reports.
Earlier this year, several reports announced the 7-year-old daytime show was canceled. NBC delivered the news in May along with plans to replace him with a Kelly Clarkson show. Steve was considered a top-five hit daytime program that reportedly averaged 1.8 million viewers a week.
The series finale also featured a guest appearance by Bishop T.D. Jakes and a grand surprise. Harvey and his foundation will send seven Ohio teens to Kent State University. The number seven may represent the number of years Steve was on the air. However, the New York Times best-selling writer did not specify.
“I’ve got seven boys that I want you to meet,” he said. “Today, my wife and I, our foundation and Omega Psi Phi fraternity, we’re sending seven African American boys to the same school [Kent State University] I flunked out of.”
Harvey phrased his journey so far as chapters of a book. Before fame, he was homeless and struggling to be a top-notched comedian. Those hard times made him who he is today, he said.
“See, your life ain’t nothing but a book,” he continued. “I happen to be 62 years old. I am in the middle of my 62nd chapter of the book that I’m writing. I’ve had some good chapters, had some bad chapters, had some chapters that lasted a little bit longer than I wanted [them] to.”
Around late May, there were rumors the seasoned host would get another shot. Variety reported Harvey may have a new show on a “digital platform, possibly with Facebook.”
“But in this 62nd chapter, I’ve got my finger on the corner of the page. All I’m doing is about to turn it. I can’t wait to see what God got for me on that other page,” he said.
Source: Blavity
Comedian and actor Dave Chappelle, who will make his Broadway debut next month at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, has extended the limited engagement.
Dave Chappelle Live on Broadway, originally scheduled for July 9–13, will now continue an additional week through July 20. The engagement is produced by Live Nation, The Araca Group, and EBG (Entertainment Benefits Group).
In 2017, Chappelle released four specials on Netflix: The Art of Spin, Deep in the Heart of Texas, Equanimity, and The Bird Revelations. All four were released as double-feature albums and received Grammy Awards for Best Comedy Album in 2018 and 2019. He captured his second Emmy for Outstanding Variety Special with Equanimity in 2018.
Tickets for the extension week will go on sale to the general public starting June 28 at 10 AM ET through TicketMaster.com.
Keenen Ivory Wayans wasn’t looking to do a TV show. In 1988, he was riding high on the success of his cult hit I’m Gonna Git You Sucka and contemplating his next movie. But he took a meeting with a fledgling network called Fox, which made an offer he couldn’t refuse. “They told me I could do whatever I wanted,” Wayans, 61, recalls. What he wanted was to do a show like Saturday Night Live only much, much edgier. Homey Da Clown, Homeboy Shopping Network, Men on Films — the skits Wayans and his mostly African American cast performed each week pushed the envelope not just of TV’s color barrier but of TV comedy, won an Emmy and incubated the careers of stars Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Lopez. Today, 25 years after its final episode (May 19, 1994), The Hollywood Reporter tracks down the cast and crew for an oral history of a button-pushing TV landmark.
THE MEETING — “He thought we were going to pitch him a black sitcom”
GARTH ANCIER, FOX ENTERTAINMENT PRESIDENT I kept index cards of promising ideas on a corkboard behind my head. One card just said “black Laugh-In.” We needed someone to bring it to life.
KEENEN IVORY WAYANS, CASTMEMBER AND CREATOR I had done a movie called I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. And it was a big success. And I had set up screenings of the movie for all the studios’ film departments. But Fox didn’t come. Instead they sent the TV execs. And so when I got a call, I thought I was going in to meet with the film side of Fox and instead ended up in a meeting with the network.
ANCIER He thought I was going to pitch him a black sitcom because of The Cosby Show. I said, “No, no, no. We would love to pitch you this idea and buy a pilot if you’re up for it.”
WAYANS At that time, Fox wasn’t even a network. They were a startup. And I really didn’t have interest in that because I wanted to pursue film. But they said to me, “You know if you come here you can pretty much do anything you want to do.” And I said, “Well, let me think about it.” And then I kind of sat and said, “If I am given an opportunity like this, what would I do?” So I started to put together the show for the idea.
SHAWN WAYANS, PRODUCTION ASSISTANT, DJ, CASTMEMBER I was a teenager. Keenen was telling me that he was working on something and might have something for me. He was always Superman to me. I’ve been watching my brother do some incredible shit since I was 5.
KEENEN IVORY WAYANS I remember using Laugh-In as a model during the pitch. I liked its quick pace. And, of course, I was a huge fan of Saturday Night Live. The difference was shorter sketches and more character-driven. I emphasized the edge of the show was going to be different. Fox bought the pilot. Then I picked my cast. Everyone wanted to be on it.
DAVID ALAN GRIER, CASTMEMBER I did my audition with Susie Essman, Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence. We improvised.
JIM CARREY, CASTMEMBER I had known Damon through the stand-up circuit, and we were always kind of clocking each other. He kind of admired what I was doing onstage. He told me, “Hey, crazy man, what do you think about coming in to audition for this thing? Come and meet my brother.”
TOMMY DAVIDSON, CASTMEMBER When I landed In Living Color, I was a hot comic. A week before getting the job I had met with Lorne Michaels in his office in 1990 [for a potential SNL spot]. He lined it up for me and said, “I don’t want a black comedian. Eddie Murphy was a mistake. I don’t want a person that stands out.” I was confused. I was born black. There’s not a zipper in the back of this thing. [A spokesperson for SNL replies: “This account is without merit. Chris Rock, Tim Meadows and Ellen Cleghorne were all hired into the cast between 1990 and 1991.”]
CARRIE ANN INABA, FLY GIRL I got a call from my agent. They were looking for hip-hop athletic dancers under 5-foot-7 of diverse cultural backgrounds. I went in wearing black leggings, motorcycle boots and a white lacy bra with a black leather jacket. I tossed my jacket to the side and walked to the center of the room, ready and eager. Keenen always said that I got the job the moment I walked in because my outfit was so bad and I had so much confidence.
KEENEN IVORY WAYANS We shot the pilot. We did “Men on Films,” “The Homeboy Shopping Network” and “The Wrath of Farrakhan” [based on Louis Farrakhan]. We showed it to Fox, and they got nervous.
ANCIER By the time the pilot was finished in 1989, I had left. Peter Chernin took over. But I saw it and I know a lot of people at Fox were offended by it. I made my thoughts known to Fox chief Barry Diller that it was a valuable show and to go forward with it.
PETER CHERNIN, FOX ENTERTAINMENT PRESIDENT Look, the truth is that everyone who saw the pilot went crazy for it and then we started showing it to advertisers. They went crazy for it. We knew this thing hit a nerve from the beginning. It was just wildly funny, and network television had never done anything this pointed about race in America.
SEASON ONE — “Spike Lee hated the show”
DAVIDSON Keenen gave us a mission statement to take the comedy as far as you can take it. He said, “The reason why we have you here is you’re out of the box, so I’m going to take you out of the box and across the yard.”
KEENEN IVORY WAYANS We were doing something that people hadn’t seen yet. Barry Diller … called Peter Chernin and said we couldn’t do [the black gay parody] “Men on Films.” He was worried it was going to be offensive, blah, blah, blah. And I called Barry and said, “I understand your concern. But do me a favor. At least come to the rehearsal and see it on its feet.” He said OK. He came down. He watched the rehearsal. And it was like a bomb went off in the studio audience. People were stomping their feet and clapping and laughing. Barry stood there watching. His face didn’t move. But then he turned to me and said, “OK,” and he left. So we were able to do it.
CARREY We were warped out of our minds. We presented several sketches that didn’t make it on the air, things that were just too insane, like the abortion rally ventriloquist. We came up with a sketch called “Make a Death Wish Foundation” about a dead kid whose posthumous wish was to go to an amusement park. That did not make it on air, either. But I came up with the face of the kid, and it eventually turned into the “Fire Marshall Bill” face.
KELLY COFFIELD PARK, CASTMEMBER David and I shot a black-and-white spoof of the Calvin Klein commercial “Obsession” and called it “Oppression.” He looked like a slave in bondage. We shot it for the pilot, but it took a minute for it to be on the air.
GRIER Spike Lee hated the show. He got really mad at us because he thought we were over-the-top about Do the Right Thing. He did not like us making fun of him. People would get angry when we poked fun at them. Arsenio Hall too — anybody that we really poked fun at.
SEASON TWO — “It wasn’t easy getting this shit on the air”
LES FIRESTEIN, WRITER AND PRODUCER I came on staff during the summer of 1990. The show was on fire. We had a shitload of work, and there were enormous demands and not a lot of sleep. I assumed all of show business was like this.
SHAWN WAYANS We were hot. Everybody in the industry would pop up on our set, from Eazy-E to Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. Sinead O’Connor came by. They just wanted to tell everybody what a wonderful show it was.
INABA There was magic in the skits, and the Fly Girls had this cult following. [Choreographer] Rosie Perez pushed us hard. She didn’t know how to pronounce words like “pirouette,” but it didn’t matter. She had a vision. And Jennifer Lopez, we all knew she was destined for greatness. She was a very determined young woman.
CHERNIN With a show like this, you’re looking to push buttons. And this show pushed further than any show ever had in the history of the network.
SHAWN WAYANS But it wasn’t easy getting this shit on the air.
KEENEN IVORY WAYANS I didn’t have antagonistic relationships with the censors. I wasn’t irrational. I knew there were restrictions. It was more about how far can I go? Like, just tell me where the line is. The frustration was that the line was moved week to week. So you could do something one week, but if they got mail, you couldn’t do it the next. We were constantly in that dance.
FIRESTEIN We put decoy sketches in the script packets to give to the Fox execs. We did a “Men on Films” sketch about [a male celebrity] hanging out with Tom and Jerry at the Cannes Film Festival because there was a rumor about a gerbil up his butt. We got a very irate note, which I still have somewhere. But it preoccupied the censor enough for us to do other stuff.
GRIER For the Headleys [“Hey Mon”], we put in all these profane Jamaican curse words. White people didn’t know what we were saying.
KEENEN IVORY WAYANS There was a white censor. Then Fox brought in a black guy who they introduced to me as someone who marched in the civil rights movement. I was just like, “He is not the president of the Black Race.” I wouldn’t deal with him.
CHERNIN From a creative standpoint, I wanted the show to be as outrageous as possible. But we have an FCC license, and we had advertisers and didn’t want to get in trouble. I think we did a highly, highly responsible job in that sense.
SEASON THREE — “They wanted the controversy”
LARRY WILMORE, WRITER I came on in the third season. Before that, people would ask, “What do you do?” I’d say I was a stand-up comedian. “Oh, that’s interesting.” But when I said, “I write for In Living Color,” oh my God, they would lose their minds.
KEENEN IVORY WAYANS We decided to do a live episode during halftime of the Super Bowl in 1992 [televised by CBS].
GRIER We hijacked it. Before In Living Color, they were doing ribbon dancers and a white Christian singing group at the Super Bowl.
KEENEN IVORY WAYANS Before we did our halftime special, it was just marching bands. That was the time during the game when everybody went to pee. But after our special, the next year, they hired Michael Jackson.
WILMORE I wrote the “Men on Football” sketch. There were so many sexual innuendos just built in. But we got a lot of support from the gay community — people loved those characters. Damon and David had so much fun playing them, they were enjoying it so much that there was something infectious about it. But [the network] was very concerned because it was live.
KEENEN IVORY WAYANS There was a Fox executive in the booth with a 60-second delay button. They could have hit that button anytime they wanted. But they wanted the controversy.
SEASON FOUR — “I showed up in dark sunglasses”
INABA I left after three years. It was time. A dancer’s career is short.
DAVIDSON Other castmembers like Jamie Foxx came in. They did a great job. But the chemistry wasn’t as good as it was with the original cast.
CARREY There was a lot of love the first few years. But then people start to fear what the next step is, where am I going from here. Things get a little tight.
WILMORE Keenen was the kind of boss who you really wanted to please but was not easy to please. I used to call him “Murphy Brown” because he had a new assistant every week.
CARREY There were a couple moments where I got pissed at Keenen and I would show up in a sketch with dark sunglasses on. Like, screw you, man. Then everybody would get pissed at me and they’d show up in my sketch wearing dark sunglasses.
FIRESTEIN It was a difficult workplace for a lot of people. One of the reasons for that is that you had this very tight-knit family that was at the center of everything, and the rest of us were not necessarily part of that. If you weren’t a Wayans, you definitely had dues to pay.
KEENEN IVORY WAYANS What started to happen into the fourth season was that it was a business. Fox started to rerun the show before it got into syndication. They were using the show to launch other shows. And they were devaluing it. I felt like they were exploiting me. So I left [in the middle of the season].
FIRESTEIN After Keenen and Damon left, people at Fox told us to stop communicating with them. I think we had Stockholm syndrome.
CARREY I was contracted for five years. I could have weaseled out, but I wanted to stick with it. Things were happening for me. I spent nights in my office with Steve Oedekerk writing the Ace Ventura: Pet Detective script. We’d stay up until four in the morning. And David Alan Grier used to rub it in during tapings. He’d go out to the audience and say, “I don’t know if you people realize it, but Jim Carrey is about to jump off in a movie called Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.” He meant it facetiously. He was making fun of me for the silly name of my movie.
SHAWN WAYANS Kim [Wayans] and I were contractually obligated to be there the last season. It was hell. I knew we were on the Titanic without the captain, and the iceberg was up ahead and I was shackled to the banister. Not one sketch would work without Keenen’s touch.
KEENEN IVORY WAYANS They didn’t understand that the show was a vision. And once you remove the visionary, you just have a sketch show.
FIRESTEIN When we were canceled [in 1994], I believe we were a bigger hit in the ratings than Seinfeld. My feeling is that the reruns prematurely aged the series. Also, I believe there was an ethnic cleansing at Fox. They were trying to become more mainstream. They started canceling African American-centric shows like South Central and Roc.
CHERNIN There’s an old Fred Silverman quote: “The least expensive programming, the least objectionable programming.” The Fox network represented the transition to the media world we live in now, which is to try to identify valuable niches. In Living Color was a big part of that transition.
WILMORE It would be hard to bring the show back now. People are too sensitive. They had to bleep words from that All in the Family reboot episode.
SHAWN WAYANS We had African Americans, Asians, females. We brought gay characters into the living room in a fun way. It was all funny and fresh. Look at diversity in TV today! We had it all in one episode.
CARREY It’s a weird atmosphere for comedy these days. There are too many lawyers in the world.
KEENEN IVORY WAYANS My siblings and I talk about the show all the time. Like, all the people we could be making fun of! But we’d be off the air in a week. Hollywood is so reactive now.
