Let’s talk about supporting your transgender kid while being a menace to South Central and drinking your juice in the hood.
If you’re not super familiar with the Wayans family, well, you’re probably just one of our younger readers. That’s fine, I’m not judging you, I’m just steadily decaying at lightspeed and every time I realize somebody I’m talking to wasn’t born when 9/11 happened I take so much psychic damage I have to lay down and nap it off. Anyway, the Wayans family are Black showbiz folks who created a lot of very memorable television and film, particularly Keenen, Shawn and Marlon Wayans, who are responsible for legendary sketch show In Living Color, popular sitcom The Wayans Bros., and the funniest entries in the Scary Movie series. For now, anyway… but more on that later.
We won’t talk about White Chicks, an unspeakable abomination that never should have been birthed, but also makes me wonder if Terry Crews is a chaser.
On Monday, an interview with Marlon Wayans was published in Variety during which he largely opines about his late father’s desire for the brothers to work together again, their reclaiming of the Scary Movie franchise, and their mistreatment at the hands of the loathsome and evil Weinsteins. That’s all well and good, interesting stuff worth reading for sure, but as you can imagine… I want to talk about Marlon’s trans son and friendship with Dave Chappelle.
Marlon’s son Kai, now 25, had his transition announced to the world when Marlon publicly shared his new name and pronouns in November of 2023, and declared his unconditional love and support. In Monday’s interview with Variety, Marlon said, “All of my kids are gifts, and our love is the wrapping paper. I’m not here for hate. Transphobia is a form of hate. Homophobia is a form of hate. Racism is a form of hate. All those small-hearted, small-minded people, there’s a hell for you. And if you think you’re gonna bully my child, go somewhere else. It’s not going to happen. I won’t stand for it.”
Interviewer Marlow Stern asks, then, how Marlon reconciles his love for his trans son and his close friendship with Dave Chappelle, who, I might remind you, is a transphobic bigot who once capitalized on the suicide of a trans woman he worked with in an attempt to launder his public image. Earlier in the interview, Marlon lamented that he couldn’t get a cameo out of Chappelle for the new Scary Movie, saying, “I wrote two really funny scenes for Chappelle and pitched them both … I love Dave and he’s like a brother, and I hope one day I’ll get that cameo.”
Marlon insists Dave is misunderstood. “I wouldn’t hang with Dave if he was full of hate. I don’t hang with people like that,” he tells Stern. “I know Dave’s heart, and his intention isn’t to punch down. Dave wants to freely tell his jokes, and if you’re going to be anti-comedy, then he’s going to keep attacking you until you learn to have a sense of humor. He’s just standing there and defending his front line as a comedian.”
He goes on to say that Chappelle is simply locked in an anti-censorship “war,” framing him as some sort of Lenny Bruce-esque folk hero who can only be understood by other comedians. “As a comedian, I respect his journey. And as a friend, I respect his journey. And for my child, I respect their journey. And as the father of my child, I can appropriate my feelings toward my friend and my feelings toward my child, and how we can put those two things together and I can explain both sides. I’m between them, so I can explain both sides to each other.”
I just write a pseudo-comedic column once a week, but my friends tell me I tend to be the funniest person in a room, and I really enjoy being hyped up by other people because childhood trauma robbed me of a healthy self-image and instilled in me a need for constant validation… so I choose to believe them! Here’s my take, as a kinda-sorta comedian:
Dave hasn’t been funny for a long time. Dave’s material about trans people is hurtful, harmful, and malicious. Dave clearly finds trans women disgusting, and he thinks it’s funny to yap about that on stage several times a year. In fact, for a guy who’s in a war against censorship, it seems like Dave Chappelle can’t stop failing up: He’s had eight comedy specials since his return to stand-up in 2017, raking in tens or hundreds of millions of dollars from his Netflix deals alone, and spends a tremendous amount of time touring and performing.
Dave has never suffered, not for a single second, for his on-stage bigotry. I can’t speak for Kai Wayans, but I can tell you that if my father refused to acknowledge that his best bro was one of the most famous transphobes in Hollywood, or even tell him to shut the fuck up about trans people, I would cut that man right out of my life, no matter how supportive he claims to be.
Like cis “allies” who can’t stop giving J.K. Rowling money hand over fist for her nasty magical slop, Marlon Wayans is doing the trans community a huge disservice by glazing his buddy, the King of Transphobic Stand-Up (sorry, Gervais, you’ve been dethroned), in Variety and trying to drag him into his movies. Speaking of which, in case you’re curious, Scary Movie is shaping up to be yet another “middle-aged comedians rail against liberalism” snoozefest: The trailer opens up with a lame joke about nonbinary people set to a track from Slim Shady, another middle-aged dweeb with a trans kid who can’t shut his mouth about our community.
Marlon says, of Scary Movie, “[We’re] not here to save the world. We’re here to remind people what it’s like to laugh and feel good. We’re all too in our phones. There’s nothing more infectious than sitting and laughing in a theater with a bunch of people with different age ranges and backgrounds. We want you to go be 15 again. Post-COVID, we need this.”
I agree, believe it or not! I grew up on comedies like Scary Movie, and I’ve long hated the decline of that genre in film. They just don’t pump out pure comedy films like they used to, and rom-coms only get to live if they’re holiday-themed. I would love to watch a good comedy and have a laugh with my friends. Unfortunately, Marlon, the federal government is trying to pulp everybody like me, and I find it hard to laugh at your shitty jokes about nonbinary people while you perform a remote stroke job for your shitty transphobic friend in the news.
You just can’t have your cake and eat it too, man. You either support your trans son, or you love your transphobic friend and write your transphobic jokes. It’s one or the other, and it seems like Marlon Wayans has already made his choice.
P.S., Marlon said he wants to make a sequel to White Chicks if Scary Movie performs well, so I hope that movie is a new historical record for box office bombs.
Aly Gibbs (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.
