The Hollywood Reporter (Weekly)
Dewayne Perkins
The Emmy-nominated writer talks starring in horror spoof The Blackening and mining his coming-out story for material: 'I thought [my family was] going to abandon me'
Unlike the character he wrote and plays in the horror spoof The Blackening, comedian Dewayne Perkins will not be staying at a cabin in the woods anytime soon. “I went camping once and it was one of those moments where I was like, ‘This is what this is? We’re really sleeping on the ground … outside?’ ” he says with a quizzical eyebrow during a video interview a few weeks before The Blackening opens in theaters June 16. “I never went back.” However, as onscreen Dewayne (yes, he and his character share the same name, and they are both openly gay), he joins nine college besties at a cabin deep, deep in the woods over Juneteenth weekend. What was supposed to be a much-needed get-together among friends drinking highly sweetened drinks and indulging in trash-talking hijinks turns into them playing a bloody trivia game called The Blackening, which determines who’s Black enough and who isn’t. In The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, how many seasons does dark-skinned Aunt Viv last before she’s replaced by light-skinned Aunt Viv? Everyone knows the first verse of the Black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” but do you know the lyrics to the second verse? Sing it, or else.
Perkins’ origin story began in Chicago, where he played high school football before becoming a part of the school’s improv team. But it was during his freshman year at DePaul University that he joined Second City and never looked back. He later became a member of another Chicago based improv group, 3Peat, and wrote The Blackening as a sketch. The skit’s satirical brilliance of equating one’s level of Blackness with one’s worthiness to live or die caught the attention of Comedy Central Originals, who turned the sketch into a short five years ago. The Blackening went viral, launching Perkins as a bold new voice in comedy. In between his improv group and stand-up, Perkins started writing for television series including The Break With Michelle Wolf and Brooklyn NineNine. In 2021, he earned an Emmy nomination for outstanding writing for a variety series for his work on The Amber Ruffin Show and secured a recurring role on the Netflix series The Upshaws. For his stand-up routines, Perkins’ coming-out story has been golden. “Based on my upbringing and where I grew up, I thought, ‘They’re going to abandon me,’ ” he says, remembering the courage he gathered to tell his mother and four sisters. “I came out and they’re all like, ‘Yeah, girl, clearly, you are homosexual.’ ” With his father, the news hit a little different, but still, he says, “casual.” “Later, I brought my boyfriend to my nephew’s birthday party. And my father asked, ‘Who’s that guy?’ And I was like, ‘That’s my boyfriend.’ He said, ‘You’re gay?’ And I said, ‘Oh my God, I forgot to tell you.’ ” Although his character Dewayne’s sexuality is not a central theme in The Blackening and only comes up as a halfbaked excuse for him not to be killed in the game, Perkins very much wants audiences to not be indifferent to his queer identity but embrace it. “The care I would want is the acknowledgement of this part of me — acknowledge how that part affects the way that I live, the way that people perceive me,” he says. Perkins shares writing credit with Girls Trip scribe Tracy Oliver on The Blackening, thanks to support from other members of 3Peat, who pushed him forward when Oliver came calling. “When Tracy asked who wrote it and that we have to write a script, they were all like, ‘Dewayne, he should do it.’ They said, ‘This is his idea,’ ” he recalls. “At that point, I had never written a movie, and I was pretty nervous. But Tracy was a very good mentor. I always felt supported. Tracy, Tim Story [the film’s director], the producers were always saying, ‘Don’t forget this is yours, this could not have happened without you,’ ” says Perkins, who’s collaborating with Story on developing the board game Clue into an animated series for Fox. “‘Never feel like you are not in a position to speak, always feel empowered.’ ”