Marlon Wayans on His Horror Turn in ‘Him’: “What Do You Need? I Can Do It All”

Marlon Wayans on His Horror Turn in ‘Him’: “What Do You Need? I Can Do It All”

After three decades as a comedy star, Marlon Wayans is starring in sports horror film Him, crediting the film’s team for believing in him as “I don’t know that I would have auditioned for it.”

The project, directed by Justin Tipping and executive produced by Jordan Peele, sees Wayans as a legendary quarterback training an up-and-coming football star (played by Tyriq Withers), as things begin to go awry.

At the film’s Los Angeles premiere on Wednesday, Wayans spoke about entering the horror sphere after his long career, telling The Hollywood Reporter, “I feel like now I’ve been doing it too long for me to have to show you guys what I do — I’ve played a white woman, I’ve played seven people in one movie, I’ve played a little person, I’ve played a junkie, I’ve played so many things it’s like bro pick one, what do you need? I can do it all.”

He continued, “When they told me they wanted me to do it, they said ‘You’re the only guy, you are him.’ I was like ‘What do you mean?’ They’re like, ‘You’re one of one. You’re the only one who is doing what you’re doing at the level that you’re doing it. Other people have — Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy, Jim Carrey — but right now the world hasn’t seen your everything, so let’s go do it.’”

Tipping explained that particularly after Wayans’ roles in the Scary Movie franchise, “that was part of the reason why it felt so right, because it was subversive. Horror fans only knew him for the parody and it was like great, buckle up. I knew he had it in him, I just don’t think he had the opportunity to play this… he did Requiem for a Dream and never really got to do that again or expand on it and be front and center in a story, so I just knew he just needed to be unlocked, unlock the beast and just let him go.”

With some comparisons to Black Swan and Whiplash, the film breaks new ground as a sports horror flick, which Tipping admits was “kind of terrifying” as they weren’t sure the genres would work together. But in his first meeting to land the director job, “I definitely said I felt like body horror was inherent in the game itself and we didn’t have to do anything crazy to achieve that, it’s just how you shoot it. The recovery that these professional athletes have to do to their body to just be consistently there, getting in basically a car wreck every weekend and then doing it again the next — the toll it takes on the body on a day to day basis is already body horror.”

The filmmaker added, “And I wanted to explore the psychology of these athletes and what it really does take to be the greatest of all time and how much you sacrifice, to the point that you may not recognize yourself anymore. That was a horrifying thought for me.”

Withers said that after coming from an athletic background, getting the script “was like food for my soul and after seeing the finished project “I went nonverbal.”

Him hits theaters on Friday.