The youngest of the Wayans brothers makes his Spokane debut

Marlon Wayans is used to life with heavyweights. So it wasn’t a big deal for him to act with such Hollywood titans as Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in the film “Air,” the entertaining biographical sports drama about the origin of the Nike Air Jordan sneaker.

“It was great playing in the sandbox with giants,” Wayans said while calling from his Los Angeles home, days before he made headlines for an altercation with a United Airlines employee. “Ben is a great director and Matt is a really cool guy, who is fun to work with.”

When his older brothers Keenan Ivory and Damon became stars during the 1980s, having Hollywood royalty rolling through the Wayans household was hardly unusual.

“Yeah, we would have guys like Jim Carrey hanging out, but that was very different from the start of my life,” Wayans said.

Growing up Wayans was a unique experience. For the first few years, life was hardscrabble surviving in Chelsea, when the Manhattan, New York, neighborhood was a far cry from the posh section it is today.

“Some people might find it hard to believe but our neighborhood, which is now prestigious, was like growing up in Beirut,” Marlon’s brother Shawn Wayans said. “We were poor. It was hard.”

Meals were missed.

“We were extremely poor,” Marlon Wayans said. “We had to find the funny about not eating dinner that night.”

But a generation ago, Keenan Ivory, 65, and Damon, 62, hit pay dirt in entertainment. The former won acclaim after co-writing and co-starring in 1987’s hilarious “Hollywood Shuffle.” The latter was a featured performer on “Saturday Night Live” in 1985 and 1986.

It was off to Hollywood for the Wayans family when Keenan Ivory created, wrote and starred in the groundbreaking sketch comedy show “In Living Color” in 1990. It became surreal for Shawn, 52, and Marlon, 50, who are the ninth and 10th of the Wayans family kids. Carrey would hang out at the house and try to crack up Shawn and Marlon.

“Jim was always on,” Marlon Wayans said. “He would fall down the steps to make us laugh. It was incredible. I was touched by greatness at an early age.”

But it wasn’t about living off the fat of the land for the youngest Wayans. The youngest of the Wayans brothers starred in the 2004 film “White Chicks.”

“We had a great time doing that movie,” Wayans said. “Shawn and I are very close.”

The brothers are so tight that they named their sons after each other, making good on a childhood pact.

“We’ve all been that way since we were little,” Wayans said. “Family is what’s most important.”

Discipline, hard work and the value of family was instilled in the Wayans brothers since they were children, thanks to their father Howell Wayans. The patriarch of the family woke Shawn and Marlon up every day at 5 a.m. so they would visit the corner bodega to buy him a cup of coffee. “He made us get out of bed then and get him coffee,” Shawn Wayans said. “We did that before we went to school and even on weekends. On Sunday, we would get him the paper. That made us who we are since we started our days early and worked hard all of our life.”

Wayans’ demanding father set the tone.

“Men are made,” Shawn Wayans said. “Women are naturally on it, but boys have to be molded and our father molded each of us.”

It’s always been about working hard for Marlon.

“There’s always a project for me on the horizon,” he said.

Next up for Wayans is his third HBO comedy special.

“It’s an honor since HBO are comedy snobs,” Wayans said. “I mean that in a good way.”

Wayans will work out some of that material when he performs Friday and Saturday at the Spokane Comedy Club.

“I like talking about the dark stuff and finding the light in it,” Wayans said. “There’s been a lot of dark during the last three years. It’s time to find the light and the funny in things. Funny is therapy for the audience and for the performer. Every situation, no matter how bad it is, I can’t help but find what’s funny in it. That’s what I do.”

Wayans was attached to a Richard Pryor bio film for years, but the project never panned out.

“That’s the way it goes sometimes in Hollywood,” Wayans said. “The plus side was it made me study Pryor’s greatness. What I saw with Richard Pryor was what it takes to be a phenomenal comic. That process was an invaluable education. What’s been great about my career is that I’ve been around the greatest in this business from those in my family to guys like Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Jim Carrey. You take note of what they do and how they do it and you apply it to yourself, and it has helped me become the best I can be as a comic and as an actor.”