Marlon Wayans Shuts Down Set in Him — Director Justin Tipping: ‘We’re Making a Movie Movie’
Justin Tipping says a single on-set moment with Marlon Wayans made everyone stop — and call it a proper movie moment. The director describes Wayans’ turn in the football horror film Him as physically and emotionally intense, and he says the cast and crew reacted with both awe and fear during a particular scene.
Casting and character
Tipping cast Marlon Wayans as Isaiah White, an eight-time championship quarterback who may be nearing retirement. The film also stars Tyriq Withers as Cameron Cade, a young quarterback recovering from a head injury and drawn into Isaiah’s secretive training compound.
Tipping said he picked Wayans after seeing his serious work in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. He told reporters that Wayans “locked in, and he transformed physically and mentally for this.”
The on-set moment that shut things down
Tipping says one take left the set silent. He recalled, “We got through a take, and I looked around, and everyone’s silent.” Then, as Tipping remembered it, “A producer came up and was like [reverentially], ‘Oh, we’re making a movie movie!’”
Tipping’s directing approach and improv
Tipping says he encouraged Wayans to move beyond the page by working through the emotion rather than only reciting lines. He explained: “This speech about football — how it’s not just a game, it’s everything — on the page, I think people could read that and just think he’s a very straightforward angry coach.”
Then he added, “But once we were there on set, I would let him go. We had this thing almost like improv, where he’d keep on book, and then I’d keep rolling, and ‘Keep that emotion! Now just be throwing stuff at [Tyriq] — yell at him about this, yell at him about that.'” And we’d get some wild, just immediate dramatic improv flourishes. And then while he was in that zone, we’d go deliver some of the scripted lines again.”
Intent and tone
Tipping said the goal was to keep Isaiah unpredictable. He said, “From one sentence to the next, we didn’t want to know what he was actually going to feel,” and added, “So it’s unsettling, because you can’t predict from beat to beat what is going to happen. That’s very intentional — he’s gaslighting and just fucking with this kid.”
He also described a specific scene as going even further, saying, “In that scene, he taps into something where it’s no longer about the scene, it’s about something much deeper,” and continued, “That’s all subtext happening behind his eyes. I think when people see that scene in its entirety on the big screen… The people on set were both moved and scared. Somehow, people got emotional, but were also like, ‘He’s terrifying.'”
Release
Him is scheduled to premiere in theaters on Sept. 19.
