Martin Lawrence has officially chimed in on the social media discourse surrounding his eponymous show, “Martin.” After Ari Lennox shared her grievances about the show’s jokes being rooted in colorism, social media users debated about the root of the comedic sparring between Martin and Tichina Arnold’s character, Pam, on the show, in particular.
“The thing that pissed me off about Martin was how much he was goin’ in on Pam, and this is coming from a girl who loves a joking a— movie and even when the joking movie is like ‘Damn, that was f—ked up.’ There are some things where I draw the line,” Lennox said at the time. “Pam was so f—ing beautiful and so fine, and I just feel like growing up as a chocolate girl, I don’t even know if I was able to understand the greatness of Pam.”
However, recently, the show’s namesake and executive producer told Fox DC’s Marissa Mitchell that it was rooted in comedy.
“I never had that concern because I knew they were jokes,” he said when asked about colorism concerns. “You know, Black people, that’s the way we joke. We go hard. Me and Tichina, were just having a lot of fun, and we were just keeping it real. And I was just keeping it real. That’s why we got a lot of laughs out of it.”
“So, she has the right to have her own opinion and everything, but there was no malicious intent,” he concluded.
Lawrence’s comments come shortly after Arnold addressed the social media discourse on Deon Cole’s show “Funny Knowing You.”
“She felt like Martin was bagging on me because I was brown skinned, because she was a brown skin girl. I understand completely what she said, and I get it,” Arnold said in reference to Lennox. “It had nothing to do with color. Those jokes were never written from [a place of] malice. It was written [based on] who’s got the best joke.”
“Ari, we understand how you feel. It wasn’t meant that way,” she added. “And so maybe Ari, you need to talk to your friends and the people that you were around during that time who made you feel that way… Somebody may have done or said something to you which allowed you to look at things a little differently and not receive them in the spirit that they were given.”
