In Living Color: Cast Photo - Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries

In Living Color aired from April 1990 until August 1994 on Fox.

The multiculteral Keenan Ivory Wayans -writer , producer, actor, comedian-was the driving force behind this sketch -comedy series that was, in many respects a mostly black Saturday Night Live. The show featured biting satirical parodies of movies, TV series, commercials, celebrities, people in the news , and black stereotypes. Among the recurring sketches were " Men on Film," gay movie critics Blaine Edwards and Antoine Mayweather (" two snaps up!"); " Hey Mon," the trials and tribulations of the Hedleys, a hard-working West Indian family in which everyone had at least six jobs; " The Buttmans," a family with buttocks instead of foreheads ( you can imagine the jokes); " The Home Boys." Wiz and Ice, two young black scam artists/thieves(" mo money, mo money, mo money!"); Homey, the cynical nasty clown (" Homey don't play that"); Anton Jackson, the spaced-out wino; Handi-Man, the handicapped superhero ( with Debbie Lee Carrington as the tiny avenger in later sketches) and caracatures of Arsenio Hall and Oprah Winfrey.

IN Living Color was a fast-paced show featuring a versatile repertory cast-including four of Keenan's nine siblings-and an energetic group of five dancers known as The Fly Girls ( one of whom was actress Jennifer Lopez). The cast over the years included Keenan Ivory Wayans, James Carrey, Kelly Coffied, Kim Coles, Tommy Davidson, David Alan Grier, T'Key " Crystal" Keymah, Damon Wayans, Kim Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Steve Park, Jamie Foxx, Marlon Wayons, Alexandra Wentworth, Twist ( Leroy Casey), Anne-Marie Johnson, Jay Leggett, Chris Rock, Carol Rosenthal, Marc Wilmore, and Reggie McFadden. James Carrey ( also known as Jim) was the WASPY young white guy who sometimes played the stooge. Most episodes ended with a live song performed by a guest rap singer or group.

Over the years there were changes. Starting in 1992 most episodes opened with spoofs of popular music vidios. That fall Twist replaced Shawn Wayans as the show's DJ. By the end of the year Keenan Ivory Wayans , who was upset by Fox's overexposing of In Living Color because he felt it would reduce its later value in syndication , had left the show, and within a year all of his siblings had also departed. In the fall of 1993, with the entire Wayans family gone, Jim Carrey had become the star of the show and Jamie Foxx, as incredibly ugly, horny Wanda Wayne , the most popular supporting character. No longer did guest rap musicians close each episode, and almost half of the regular cast was white.

A Review from Entertainment Weekly

TV Review
In Living Color
A By Ken Tucker
The funniest sketch-comedy series since SCTV, In Living Color is also the hippest show on TV.

There's nothing radical about the structure of In Living Color; it's a series of sketches-parodies of TV, the movies, and pop music; and takeoffs on events in the headlines — broken up by brief performances from a troupe of booty-shaking dancers. But In Living Color has its own sharp-witted yet friendly point of view and provides a showcase for more first-rate black performers than any program since The Richard Pryor Show, which lasted for just over a month in 1977.

In Living Color's point of view comes primarily from the show's chief writer, executive producer, and star, Keenen Ivory Wayans, who oversaw 1988's hilarious feature-film blaxploitation parody I'm Gonna Git You Sucka.

Wayans wants, above all else, to make you laugh, and I haven't laughed harder in a year than I did at In Living Color's parody of The Love Connection featuring dead-on impersonations of Mike Tyson (Wayans) and Robin Givens (the beautifully rubber-faced Kim Coles) as the dating contestants. And Jim Carrey is an extraordinarily elastic embodiment of host Chuck Woolery.

But Wayans also wants to explode a whole set of current cultural clichés. Here, for example, is a half-hour that actually grants you enough intelligence to think of rap music as something other than rude noise, and then goes on to lampoon rap's worst excesses without being racist about it.

There's no predicting whom or what Wayans and his crew will take on next, or what attitude they'll take toward their target. For its genial obstreperousness alone, In Living Color is worth tuning in to every week.

An Article from Entertainment Weekly
Published on April 13, 1990

Night of the Living Laughs
''In Living Color'' bursts onto the scene -- Keenen Ivory Wayans makes his mark with a new sketch comedy show

By Mark Schwed

The woman playing Robin Givens is on a ''Love Connection'' set describing her first date with Mike Tyson: ''We went to this lovely little jewelry store where I allowed Michael to purchase me a very lovely ruby, diamond, and sapphire collection and a matching car!''

''Did you give Mike anything?'' the host asks.

''Lithium!''

In Living Color — on which this parody is set to appear — is, it seems safe to say, the first urban, hip-hop, ethnically diverse, comedy sketch-dance series to show up on television.

It makes its debut Sunday, April 15, at 9:30 p.m. on Fox (and the next week moves to 9 Saturday nights). Fox has made its mark by being bold: The Simpsons, Married. . .With Children, The Tracey Ullman Show. And now In Living Color.

''I'm a big believer that there is an audience out there desperate for anything new and fresh on TV,'' says Peter Chernin, president of the Fox Entertainment Group and the executive who has championed In Living Color since he arrived at Fox a year ago.

In Living Color is Keenen Ivory Wayans' show, and it got its start more than a year ago when he screened his film I'm Gonna Git You Sucka in Los Angeles. Wayans, who wrote, produced, directed, and starred in the comedy hit (a parody of black exploitation movies of the '70s), invited film executives from 20th Century Fox to attend, but they didn't. Instead, the young Fox TV execs showed up, and they liked what they saw.

''They called me and asked what I would like to do,'' Wayans recalls. ''I really wasn't interested in doing TV, but they said, 'Anything you want to do.' I said, 'Hmmmm.'''

Wayans, 31, pitched them his plan: to do a comedy sketch/variety show with an integrated cast.

One cast member, David Alan Grier, says, ''The whole concept of In Living Color [is] to have more than one token, more than one color, to explore comedy from varied points of view: black, Hispanic, Asian, and white people all together.''

Wayans' proposal also called for a different style of music and dance: hip-hop. Fox gave him the go-ahead, but Wayans wanted an hour show, and the network wanted a half-hour.

''I gave up the hour to get something else,'' Wayans says. ''I got creative control. What that's allowed me to do is what I want to do. I can do a sketch and, as long as it's within the boundaries of standards-and-practices, they pretty much say OK.''

That means doing the Tyson-Givens date sketch. And the ''Homeboy Shopping Network,'' a parody of the Home Shopping Network in which two kids hawk stolen goods from the back of a truck. And ''Wrath of Farrakhan,'' which pokes fun at both Star Trek and the controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

''What's interesting is that the network people think the Farrakhan bit is one of the more radical sketches,'' Wayans says. ''But when it was tested with an audience it was one of the favorites. The one that shot off the page, the one that got the negative reaction, was one nobody thought twice about: a 'Sammy Davis sings Mandela' sketch,'' in which an actor playing Davis did a soft shoe and sang, ''The Mandy man cannnnn.'' Because of the test results, Wayans decided to drop the bit. ''I never liked it anyway,'' he says.

Wayans has recruited an impressive cast that includes Saturday Night Live alumnus Damon Wayans (Keenen's younger brother), whose film credits include Colors, Beverly Hills Cop, Hollywood Shuffle, and Earth Girls Are Easy; impressionist Jim Carrey, who starred in the NBC series The Duck Factory; musician Tommy Davidson, who began doing comedy in a topless bar; actress, ballet dancer, and opera singer T'Keyah ''Crysys'' Keymah; Kim Wayans (Keenen's sister), who has appeared in China Beach and A Different World; comedian Kim Coles, who began as a warm-up comic for The Cosby Show; and Grier, a Tony award nominee for his performance as Jackie Robinson in The First.

''The cool thing is everybody is hungry,'' says Wayans, dressed in an L.A. Lakers sweatshirt, sweat pants, and sneakers. '''Eye of the Tiger,' I call it. I wanted people with the same sort of energy and passion I have. That's the kind of freshness you want.''

Wayans does not lack for energy. He has another pilot — Hammer, Slammer, and Slade, based on I'm Gonna Git You Sucka — in the works for ABC, and a comedy for Universal about two black cops, from Scotland Yard and from Washington, that he will direct and star in.

''I'd like to become like Norman Lear or Spielberg, someone who has really franchised into all the different media,'' Wayans says. ''It's not the money. I've already made enough money. I think about the power. The control. That's the dream for me.''

For an episode guide go to http://www.tv.com/in-living-color/show/893/summary.html

For a Page devoted to In Living Color go to http://valdefierro.com/ilc02.html

For More on In Living Color go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Living_Color#Cast

To Meet The Wayans Family go to http://www.oprah.com/tows/pastshows/200406/tows_past_20040614.jhtml