Wayans looks to regain that cutting edge
Damon Wayans can sympathize with Dave Chappelle. Fifteen years ago, Wayans was the young black comic with a hot and sometimes controversial show as a cast member and writer on ``In Living Color." Just like ``Chappelle's Show," ``In Living Color" put race front and center, twisting stereotypes and challenging audiences to laugh.
Wayans, who also hosts the BET Awards June 27, understands the pressure that drove Chappelle to leave his show. After five years of a sitcom he calls ``milquetoast," Wayans is eager to jump back in to the fire. He'll start tonight at the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom, where he'll be honing the edge he says he lost working on ``My Wife and Kids."
``Doing network TV for five years is almost like doing time in jail," he says. ``And then someone takes the handcuffs off you, and you can say what you want to say but it's [not coming]."
Wayans says he realized he'd lost it one night onstage at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles, when hassled by a heckler.
``I was about to do some material about getting old," he says. ``I said, `I'm 45, I'm getting old.' And some dude said, `You sure are.' The way he said it messed with me throughout my whole set. Ten years ago, I would've destroyed him."
After that, he made a vow that he'd destroy anyone who heckled him, just for his own piece of mind. Besides, he'll need to regain that sharpness for his new Showtime sketch comedy show, ``The Underground," which debuts Sept. 14. According to Wayans, the show will allow him to let loose the way he did on ``In Living Color," and he'll be using his stand-up to sharpen his comic instincts.
``It's going to fuel me taking chances and improvising in characters and stuff like that," he says. ``For this project -- `The Underground' -- I gotta be fearless. And the fact that it's on Showtime, I can say whatever I want. I better say something."
Chappelle's exit has left a void, and Wayans is the perfect comic to fill it. Chappelle influenced Wayans this past winter at the US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen when the two were booked on the same show. Wayans was impressed and inspired.
``I just saw how free Dave Chappelle was onstage," Wayans says. ``This guy's just bringin' it, because he doesn't care. He's free to say whatever he wants to say. He's got this martyr thing going on, but I see as an artist, he had to do that. To go where he wanted to go, he had to do that. I'm trying to do that and keep the money."
Tenuta, the self proclaimed ``Love Goddess" and creator of ``Judyism," is meanwhile suspicious of the trendy religious practices of her neighbors, from kabbalah strings to, well, Scientology in general. ``Everybody here's either got a red rope around their arm," she says, ``or they're coming off a spaceship with Tom Cruise."
There is one Boston celebrity Tenuta says she wouldn't mind meeting. ``That hot slab of meat, Tom Brady," she says. ``He should come to the show of the Goddess. I'm going to be husband hunting while I'm there, so he could be one of the guys."
Damon Wayans plays the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom, Hampton Beach,
N.H., tonight at 8. Call 603-929-4100 for tickets.
