Him Director Justin Tipping Describes Marlon Wayans’s ‘Terrifying’ On-Set Moment

Justin Tipping’s football horror Him is anchored by a series of bold creative choices — from a striking visual palette (Tipping has said the look drew inspiration from a notable 1990s ad campaign) to a narrative that fuses surreal horror with sharp commentary on how athletes are commodified. The most unexpected of those choices: casting writer-producer-comic Marlon Wayans as the superstar quarterback who both mentors and menaces the film’s protagonist.

Wayans portrays Isaiah White, an eight-time champion widely regarded as the game’s greatest, and rumored to be nearing retirement. Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers) is the talented young quarterback waiting in the wings. After Cameron suffers a potentially career-ending head injury, Isaiah invites him to an isolated, dreamlike training compound — a place where reality bends and the power dynamic between the two men steadily unravels.

Image: Universal Pictures

If you know Wayans from his comedic repertoire — Scary Movie, White Chicks, or In Living Color — his casting here might come as a surprise. Tipping says he saw a different side of Wayans decades earlier in Darren Aronofsky’s 2000 drama Requiem for a Dream, where Wayans’ work as Tyrone convinced him the actor could anchor a serious, intense role.

Tipping has praised Wayans’ transformation for the part, both physically and emotionally, saying the actor brought a depth to Isaiah that exceeded expectations. One sequence featured in the trailer — a charged monologue about what football represents — reportedly silenced the entire set when Wayans delivered it.

On the day they filmed that moment, Tipping recalls the crew’s stunned response and how a producer reacted almost reverently, remarking that they were “making a movie” in the truest sense.

“There’s something grounding about Marlon, even at his most extreme,” Tipping told Polygon. He says he and the cast built a deliberately heightened world — think Any Given Sunday–style intensity — so that Isaiah’s presence would feel overwhelming and unpredictable as he shepherds the young, impressionable Cameron.

To achieve that volatility, Tipping encouraged Wayans to improvise emotionally — not to rewrite dialogue, but to separate raw feeling from the scripted words. The director would let a take run as Wayans stayed “on book” while also throwing spontaneous emotional beats at Tyriq Withers, capturing immediate, volatile moments and then returning to the written lines while the actor remained in that charged state.

Image: Universal Studios

Tipping says the aim was to keep Isaiah’s emotional temperature unstable — “from one sentence to the next, we didn’t want to know what he was actually going to feel.” That unpredictability, he explains, makes the character unnerving: at times charismatic and protective, at others manipulative and cruel.

He adds that, in rehearsal and on set, he and Wayans developed a shorthand — a way of “communicating without communicating” — so small gestures could trigger powerful, lived-in reactions. But that landmark football monologue reached a different level: it carried subtext so potent that those watching were both moved and unnerved, impressed by a performance that felt larger than the scene itself.

Him opens in theaters on September 19, 2025.

Source: Polygon