Damon Wayans and Damon Wayans Jr. to play father and son on new sitcom
The show will star the elder Wayans as a successful radio host and his son as a charming loser
In a clever bit of casting, Damon Wayans Jr. from New Girl and Happy Endings is going to play the son of Damon Wayans from My Wife And Kids and In Living Color in an untitled CBS sitcom. Two guys with the same name playing a father and son? What are the odds of that?
Now now, we’re just kidding. We know that Damon Wayans Jr. is actually the real-life son of Damon Wayans, we were just having a bit of a laugh. Fun, right? Anyway, the show is co-written by the Damon Wayans (the older one) and Last Man Standing veteran Kevin Hench, and a Deadline story announcing the news says that it’s about a “legendary talk radio host” called “Poppa” who has to try and force his adult son—“who has all his charm and none of his drive”—to grow up.
That’s basically a perfect setup for this show, with the obvious person obviously playing the obvious part, and it has some meta-relevance to their real relationship… though the younger Wayans seems to have plenty of drive, if only from the outside looking in. We don’t have any special insight into what the Wayans family is like (earlier in this news story we were pretending that we didn’t even realize they were related).
This will be the elder Wayans’ first time back as a network sitcom star in over a decade, though he did make an appearance with his son on Happy Endings in the episode “Like Father, Like Gun.” He played—get this—the father of Brad, his son’s character. So not only do they have a lifetime of experience being father and son, but they also played father and son before on network television!