
Jamie Foxx has a litany of characters on his résumé that have brought laughter to fans for more than three decades. The Academy Award winner’s range as an entertainer spans dramatic roles such as Django, portrayals of real-life people like Ray Charles and The Soloist Nathaniel Ayers, and of course, a long list of comedic flexes on television and the big screen.
Currently promoting his new Netflix film Back in Action, he sat down with Vanity Fair to take a look back at some of the memorable roles throughout his career. Among the clips of his work that Foxx reviewed was an “In Living Color” bit as the raucous Wanda.
The multi-hyphenate joined the cast of the Fox sketch comedy in 1991 during its third season. Wanda, who wore a blonde wig, had her lips turned up and was slightly cross-eyed as she tried to woo male suitors with the promise of rocking their worlds.
The old clip garnered chuckles from the actor as he declared that type of comedy would never work these days. “We knew that we were doing something great in comedic cinema, like, you don’t get these types of moments often,” said Foxx. “I don’t think you have actually seen a pairing like that in generations, and you have great guys out there, ‘Key & Peele’ and ‘Saturday Night Live.’”
The “Beat Shazam” co-host proclaimed that “comedians would give their left arm to have that type of comedic juggernaut of a sketch. Now, wearing the dress came with complications. You know, you get known for that. But the history of Wanda and the spirit of Geraldine (a female character portrayed by the late great Flip Wilson on his eponymous variety show in the ‘70s) and all of the great guys who donned these characters … whether it’s Some Like It Hot or whether it’s Eddie Murphy, ‘Sherman, Sherman, Sherman, Sherman, Sherman, yes.’”
While many people have debated the cultural ramifications of Black male talent dressing like women for laughs, Foxx is steadfast in believing that, “These characters were like artistic statements in comedy. You know, we wanna entertain you, and we just having fun. We just being funny.”
The Grammy Award-winning singer previously touched on the backlash of male comics cosplaying women in 2017. At the time, he was promoting the short-lived series “White Famous.” He told Variety, “In the first episode there’s a moment with a dress, and there’s always that question of whether a comic should wear a dress and is it selling out if they wear a dress? It’s a tip of the hat to all the comics that have to deal with that,” he said.
See what else Foxx had to say about some of his most memorable roles in the full video below.