Football season has arrived, and so has a new horror movie produced by Jordan Peele that delves into the sinister side of the game.
HIM’s hero is a starry-eyed NFL rookie sent to train with a fading football idol, who lives in a creepy Brutalist compound in the desert. The architecture matches the vibe; there’s bloodlust in the air and even among the ragged fans who camp along the road outside.
The film is a breakout for actor Tyriq Withers, who plays rising quarterback Cameron Cade, a character so clear of eye and full of heart, he seems to have scrambled straight from Friday Night Lights. His mentor Isaiah White is played with low-key menace by Marlon Wayans, the multi-hyphenate Hollywood legend known for acting in, writing and producing multiple iterations of the Scary Movie franchise, among many other films, shows and comedy specials.
Withers, 27, was a college athlete in real life. Born in Jacksonville, Fla., he was a wide receiver for Florida State who snuck away from football practice to audition for his first play.
“Tyriq was the perfect choice,” Wayans told NPR during an interview with both actors. “He was young, but he’s not young in performance. You’d think he was way older and [with] way more experience with the kind of gifts he has and his natural talent.”
As a mentor to Withers in real life, Wayans said he encouraged the young actor to hone his skills as a writer and producer to ensure longevity in the industry.
“You know, I’ve been here 35-plus years and it’s not because I sat around waiting on roles,” Wayans said, slightly sternly. “It’s because I was proactive. I was writing roles, I was producing, I was creating TV shows. A lot of stuff I’ve done has been [out of] necessity.”
“Marlon was very on me about the writing of it all,” Withers affirmed. “He would tell me how to write, and give me books.”
Those books included screenwriting staples such as Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder, Story by Robert McKee, Myth and the Movies by Stuart Voytilla, The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler and Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces.
“You read those five, four books, learn structure, learn what a hero’s journey is … and create great stories,” Wayans said.
With his matinee idol looks, Withers seems destined to follow the hero’s journey on screen. HIM is not the first time he’s played the center of a complicated story. In a 2022 episode of the celebrated TV show Atlanta, Withers played a light-skinned, mixed-race high school student passing as white. But to qualify for a scholarship given by a Black billionaire, he has to prove his cultural bona fides in front of a bench of skeptical judges. The episode unsparingly examines cultural assumptions about race and colorism; similarly, HIM is a scathing critique of how professional sports capitalize upon the bodies and minds of Black athletes. The film sits firmly in the tradition of Jordan Peele, the horror auteur whose Get Out was a blockbuster hit in 2017.
“For me, it’s just telling stories that really are in line with who I am as a person,” Withers said. In the interview, he described himself as an empath, and said he’s working on self-healing after the death of a beloved older brother.
Withers’ next role is in the romantic drama Reminders of Him, based on Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel. “That’s a story about love, grief, forgiveness, motherhood,” he said. Making that was even scarier, he said, than this football horror film, “because you’re just living in that vulnerability.”
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