From that point on, Jim Carrey’s career was on the ascent. In 1990, he joined the cast of “In Living Color,” a move that he would later cite as transformative. In December 2019, Carrey praised the show’s creators, explaining on Twitter that “brilliant Black minds gave me a shot in Hollywood when none of the white guys thought I could connect or be a leading man.”
While speaking to BlackTree TV, Carrey elaborated on the personal impact of the experience. As he put it, “It was the thing, basically. There was a lot of work that went into that, but that was the doorway.” According to Celebrity Net Worth, the show as also his first big pay day: Carrey earned $25,000 per episode.
Carrey has even argued that the show’s massive cultural impact extends all the way to the Super Bowl halftime show, which he believes the show changed completely. In 1992, Fox decided to put a live episode of the show on the air at the same time as the annual football game. As Complex notes, the response from the Super Bowl was swift: The following year, Michael Jackson was booked to perform at halftime. As Carrey told BET, “If you’ll remember, I believe it was the very next year they had somebody like Michael Jackson on the halftime show. Until then, it was marching bands and whatever, right? It definitely pushed it to another level.”
