The comedian says the iconic Fox sketch series remains too sacred to hand to outsiders — but stops short of making any promises
Marlon Wayans may have just planted a seed.
“Maybe my calling is to reboot In Living Color,” the comedian and filmmaker told Variety in a new interview, a statement that will land with particular weight among fans of the seminal sketch comedy series that helped reshape American television in the early 1990s.
In Living Color debuted on Fox in April 1990, created by Wayans’ older brother Keenen Ivory Wayans. At a time when mainstream sketch comedy was largely homogeneous, the show arrived as a sharp, predominantly Black alternative to Saturday Night Live, blending urban humor, sharp social satire, and explosive physical comedy. It launched the careers of Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx, and Jennifer Lopez — who got her start as one of the show’s signature Fly Girls dancers — and ran for five seasons before ending its run in 1994. The series earned a Primetime Emmy and remains one of the most culturally significant comedy programs in the history of the medium.
Marlon, alongside siblings Damon, Kim, Shawn, and Keenen, was central to the show’s identity. But he is quick to point out that any revival would live or die on one condition: the Wayans have to be in it. “The only people that can do it is us,” he said.
He was equally direct about why the original ended when it did. When Keenen departed after Season 4 amid a well-documented dispute with Fox over creative control, the show did not survive long without him. “Keenen was the beating heart of that show,” Marlon said. “In Living Color died one season after Keenen left.”
The degree of difficulty, he acknowledged, is not lost on him. “It’s hard to execute that level of humor every week for multiple years,” he said, adding that some institutions are better honored than resurrected. “Some things you don’t need to resuscitate. In Living Color was an institution and I wish it was still around.”
What’s shifted his thinking, at least slightly, is the unexpected second life of the Scary Movie franchise — another Wayans-originated property that the family has recently returned to. “If you asked me 15 years ago if we’d be doing Scary Movie again, I’d say, ‘Hell no, the ship has sailed!'” he said. The revival, he suggested, proved his instincts aren’t always final.
For now, Wayans was careful to manage expectations. “It’s not in the cards right now,” he said. But given the trajectory of the last few years, he left little doubt that the question isn’t entirely closed.