Marlon Wayans talks about how dealing with great loss has affected his life and work.
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At a recent appearance at School of Greatness Podcast, Wayans spoke to host Lewis Howes about losing not only both of his parents, but a total of 57 loved ones.
“I had a great life… and then my parents and 57 people I loved died,” the comedian revealed. “That’s the sad thing about getting as old as I did.”
Despite losing so many people close to him, Wayans admitted that his mother’s death was particularly difficult for him.
“I started to have this different view of myself because I was saving myself with my comedy,” he explained. “The expression became different. The expression became therapeutic. I’m bleeding inside, but I’m literally pulling myself out of depression because my mother’s death shattered me into a million pieces. The greatest grief of my life.”
Wayans previously spoke about the huge amount of loss he has had to deal with in his life at a meeting with the New York Times in March. During this conversation, the comedian said: “I lost 58 people I loved in three years. It felt biblical.”
Marlon also spoke about the loss of his mother in this interview and revealed that she was the reason he never got married.
“My mother’s death broke me,” he said The New Newspaper. “It shattered me into a thousand pieces because that was my girl. I never married because I never wanted my mother to be jealous of a woman. I never wanted my mother to feel inferior to a woman.”
He also revealed that he told his mother on her deathbed that he always wanted to make her feel like she was his “No. 1 girl.”
While struggling with so much death and grief, Wayans Good morning America in 2023: “The only thing that saves me is the stage.”
“There are so many things in my life right now that can be depressing,” the comedian explained. “I lost my mother recently, my father three days ago… When I’m suffering, I find purpose in the laughter of other people who ease my pain. And I think it’s important for all of us to do what comedians do, which is to look at this world, look at this life and always try to spend our lives finding a smile. And that’s what I do on stage.”
However, that does not mean that he does not feel pain on stage. While on the School of Greatness Podcast, Wayans also talked about his latest standup special, Good grief.
The comedian said he “broke down on stage” while talking about his late mother and ultimately decided not to cut that part from the final footage.
“I broke down. I cried. Because the reality of my parents being gone hit me,” Wayans told the host. “It hit me (before), but it shouldn’t hit me on a show when I’m filming a special. And it hit me and I was like, all right, cool. I wanted to cut that out, but I was like, no. Keep it to myself. Because people need to understand that I, like you, am suffering. But life goes on and we’re still looking for a smile.”
He continued:
“I get so many messages in my inbox about Good grief on Amazon Prime, about how it affected them, how it helped them, how they were able to grieve. They lost their parents too, we’re in the same club, Gang Gang. And how they cried with me and thanked me because they were in a depression and I helped them find a way out because I showed them my own way. So that’s healing.”
