Family Affair

The ties that bind bring father-son funnymen Damon Wayans and Damon Wayans Jr. together for Poppa’s House, a sitcom that’s legitimately close to home. “I’m with him all the time, sans the entertainment aspect, so we get along like brothers — unless I’m in trouble,” laughs the younger Wayans.

The two have worked together before — Senior guest starred on Junior’s Happy Endings and Happy Together, while Junior was a writer and guest star on dad’s My Wife and Kids — but this is the first time they have headlined a series together. “We just thought this was the perfect story to put our talents in,” continues Wayans Jr. of the multi-camera comedy, in which the elder Wayans stars as “Poppa,” a longtime, no-holds-barred radio host living next door to his aspiring-director son Damon (Wayans Jr.), daughter-in-law Nina (Tetona Jackson, Good Trouble) and their two kids.

“We’re making a classic family sitcom and our little spin on it is that we’re doing it with an actual family,” says exec producer Dean Lorey, adding that even more Wayans are working behind the scenes. “We have on the writing staff, Kim Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Michael Wayans. It’s a very fun family atmosphere for us.”

That vibe translates onto the screen, where the smart-alecky Poppa finds himself dealing with all sorts of noise on both the personal and professional fronts in the series opener. At home, he’s realizing that his adult son, who refuses to accept that filmmaking may be a dead-end and get a real job, still needs a steady source of parental supervision. While it’s not exactly art imitating life, Wayans Jr. does admit that “I like that my character is a combination of me and my younger brother. Like a little amalgamation of us and Peter Pan, just like a guy that doesn’t really want to grow up and he has his dreams [but] his dreams kind get in the way of his real life.”

At work, things are just as sticky after the casually sloppy Poppa is unexpectedly paired with a sophisticated new cohost, Dr. Ivy Reed, played by First Wives Club’s Essence Atkins. An unofficial family member, thanks to roles in multiple Wayans projects, Atkins raves that the Wayans’ work ethic is all “about making sure that what we’re doing is about facilitating the story, and in the process, that we are treating one another with kindness and appreciation. That is a throughline behind every Wayans I have ever met. They are kind, considerate, and they work in excellence.”

Even if their characters are working someone else’s nerves! Before Poppa and Reed’s first show can go live, it becomes will-they-won’t-they clear that his brash shock jock and her brainy psychologist do not share the same frequency…and probably shouldn’t share the same studio. Until that is, Poppa and Damon find fittingly humorous ways to help each other out of their mutual messes. And it’s one of those fixes, Lorey reveals, that will help Poppa get the best of both worlds, as it were.

“We are trying to bring things from [their] real lives into the show and we’ve got a lot of help with kids and the grandkids…these multiple points of view,” he notes. “In an effort to sort of continue that, we are making a couple shifts. The show’s called Poppa’s House, so we want to see more of Poppa’s house. We want that to be very much the center of the show.” To that end, “we’re going to see Poppa make a move from the radio station to doing a podcast at home.” That way, the writers can “bring the life of the family into the life of the show” and smartly capitalize on the combined power of two men who can’t help but crack each other up.

“One of my favorite pastimes is to text him around midnight and just make him laugh…and make his wife go ‘Damon, tell your father to go to sleep,’” admits a giggling Wayans Sr., who clearly gets as good as he gives. “We kind of play off each other and we’re equals when we go on to [set],” agrees Wayans Jr, explaining that filming with his father is always a give-and-take of epically funny (and unexpected) proportions. “He’s going to have stuff in his hip pocket to try to surprise me and make me laugh and I’m going to have stuff in my back pocket to make him laugh too. But as long as we’re doing that, you know, we are going to win because that’s the family formula.”

Poppa’s House, Series Premiere, Monday, October 21, 8:30/7:30c, CBS