In Living Color
Keenen Ivory Wayans brought irreverent Black sketch comedy to primetime and stacked the cast with unknowns named Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx, and David Alan Grier — while the Fly Girls' dance breaks included a young Jennifer Lopez. It won an Emmy in its first season, and its live Super Bowl halftime stunt rewrote how the NFL books the big game.
Fox came to Keenen Ivory Wayans after his films Hollywood Shuffle and I'm Gonna Git You Sucka found an audience, and the show he built premiered on April 15, 1990. It put irreverent Black humor on primetime network TV at a moment when the mainstream idea of Black comedy had been set by inoffensive, family-friendly fare like The Cosby Show. Wayans created it, wrote for it, and starred in it, and over its run the cast was stacked with then-unknowns — Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx, Tommy Davidson, David Alan Grier, Kelly Coffield Park, T'Keyah Crystal Keymáh, and brother Damon Wayans, whose Homey D. Clown became a national catchphrase machine while Carrey's Fire Marshall Bill burned through every safety lecture. The Fly Girls, the show's dance troupe choreographed by Rosie Perez, introduced television audiences to Jennifer Lopez and Carrie Ann Inaba, with Heavy D supplying the theme.
The first two seasons were a phenomenon, pulling Nielsen ratings above 10 points, and the show won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series in 1990, its debut year. Then came the stunt that outlived the show: in January 1992, Fox aired a live In Living Color special directly against the halftime show of CBS's Super Bowl XXVI broadcast. The counterprogramming coup pulled so many viewers that the NFL started booking A-list halftime acts to defend the window — beginning with Michael Jackson the very next year. Every blockbuster halftime show since owes something to the night a sketch show scared the league.
Seasons three and four sagged as the Wayans family fought Fox leadership over creative control, and the show ended on May 19, 1994, after five seasons. Carrey appeared in all five, though by the last one his film career was taking off and his appearances thinned. The 2018 history of the show borrowed its title from the line everyone already knew: Homey Don't Play That!
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