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in the
got picked up, they were like, ‘We need this to be
more of a melting pot. We need to have each race.’”
One of the dancers who auditioned was a
striking young Asian-American named Carrie
Ann Inaba. It was one of Inaba’s first casting calls,
and she fretted over what to wear. “I chose this
super-lacy bra I bought from this really expensive
lingerie store, black leggings, motorcycle boots
and a black jacket.” Keenen later told her that the
outfit got her the gig.
“He was like, ‘Your outfit was so strange, but
you looked like you thought it was the best,’” she
says. “‘You walked in with so much confidence, I
pretty much gave you the job the moment I saw
you.’”
Along with Inaba, two other women were
hired from the auditions: Michelle Whitney-
Morrison, a raven-haired beauty who’d been on
the show Fame and had a minor role in School
Daze, and a tall blonde named Cari French. Lang
stayed on from the pilot, as did Lisa Marie Todd.
The final troupe fit the United Colors of Benetton
ideal. “We had an Asian girl, a dark-skinned sister,
a light-skinned sister, an Italian girl and a white
girl,” says Earle.
The DJ from the pilot, DJ Daddy Mack, was
replaced for the series with SW1, better known
as Shawn Wayans. Keenen knew Shawn wanted
to be a part of the show, but also knew that as a
writer, standup or actor, he simply wasn’t ready.
Bringing him in as the DJ, introducing him to
audiences while he worked on his comedy chops,
made sense, though Shawn maintains that
wasn’t the original impetus for the change.
“They wanted someone with a bit more
swag,” Shawn says. “I had a little swag, so one of
the producers suggested me.”
The not particularly well-kept secret was
that Shawn, unlike the man he
replaced, wasn’t a real DJ. Up
in the booth at ILC, his job was
to merely act like a DJ. None of
his equipment was connected
to anything. “I’d listen to the
tracks and make sure I was on
cue when the camera cut to
me, to look like I was mixing,”
he admits.
As Keenen puts it, “It didn’t
matter whether he was a DJ or
not, because it wasn’t live. He
was a cute kid, and he wanted
to be around his brothers while
he was working on his standup.
So I put him up there.”Perhaps Shawn’s biggest musical
contribution was helping recruit rapper Heavy D
to do the show’s theme song. As Keenen recalls,
“Heavy grew up with my cousin in Mount Vernon,
and he and Shawn were friends. So I told him
what the show was, and he went off and put it
together.”
Heavy D, who died in 2011, was already a star
in hip-hop, and his association with the show
helped build its credibility. For Keenen, the song,
with its energetic verses, rhythmic turntable
scratches and singsong-y chorus — “You can
do what you want to/In Living Color” — was
“perfect” for what he was trying to get across. “I
couldn’t ask for anything more.”In trimming the show to a half hour,
cuts needed to be made to the pilot.
Sammy Davis Jr. was undergoing a
battle with throat cancer — one that
he’d eventually succumb to in May
1990 — so the decision was made to
shelve Tommy Davidson’s Sammy-
as-Mandela sketch. At the time, it
was perhaps understandable, though
with the release of Mandela from
prison in South Africa that February,
a counterargument could be made
that the sketch would never had
been timelier. The fact that it was
permanently shelved leaves Davidson
smarting all these years later.
“I don’t know why they didn’t air it, because
somebody being sick is not enough to me,” he
says. Far from being a takedown of Sammy, the
sketch “was an ode to him. Personally it would’ve
established me as one of the frontrunners of
the show.” Instead, Davidson
was barely in the show’s
first episode. Some have
suggested Keenen was trying
to ensure Damon would be the
breakout star of the ensemble.
Other choices had to be
made about episode one,
and everyone, it seemed, had
an opinion, including Barry
Diller and Peter Chernin. If
Diller was known as bullish
and intimidating, Chernin
was prized for his bedside
manner. Chernin had worked
in publishing before moving
over to television at Showtime,where, like Albrecht at HBO, he pushed the
network toward original programming. By the
time he came to Fox in 1989, he was an executive
known for building bridges, not burning them. He
was the one you sent in to ease your show creator
off a ledge.
Chernin had asked Joe Davola to talk to
Keenen about toning down the first episode, but
Davola balked. Davola had spent a lot of time
building trust with Keenen and didn’t want to ruin
their relationship. Besides, he didn’t want to be
the messenger for a message he didn’t agree
with. About a week before ILC was set to debut,
Chernin went to see Keenen himself.
“Peter said, ‘We want to make some changes
to the pilot,’” Keenen recalls. “’We want to take
out “The Homeboy Shopping Network,” “Men on
Film,” and “The Wrath of Farrakhan,” come in with
some tamer stuff and slowly build this audience.
Then we can really push the envelope.’”
It wasn’t a totally unreasonable suggestion.
Why scare away potential viewers right out of
the gate? Why not warm them up a little, build a
relationship with them, so they’ll be open to the
more radical sketches later? Fox wasn’t in an
unassailable position. The network was limping
along, still only broadcasting three nights a
week, with a couple of modest hits to its name.
Upsetting viewers and advertisers wasn’t in its
best interest.
Chernin and Diller weren’t big, bad, clueless
executives stomping out creativity they didn’t
understand. They liked the show. They liked
Keenen. They wanted to help him succeed.
Chernin wasn’t trying to sand down the show’s
jagged points, just rearrange them a little.
Keenen wasn’t interested: “I said to him,
‘Peter, I wanna kick the door in, guns blazing.
Whatever happens, happens. If we fail, we fail big.
If we win, we win big. I don’t wanna spoon-feed
the audience. I want them to know exactly what
time it is. I’m willing to take that risk. Whatever
heat comes, send it my way.’”
It was an impassioned defense, and Chernin
took it in for a minute. He told Keenen he’d talk to
Diller and get back to him. It was a high-stakes
staring contest. Fox blinked first.
“They were like, ‘Okaaaay,’” says Keenen,
letting out a theatrical sigh. “’If you take the heat
and you’re okay that this could be the worst thing
that ever happened in the history of television,
we’ll support you.’”
With that less-than-unqualified vote of
confidence, In Living Color debuted on April 15,
1990.