Tichina Arnold is finally giving her viewpoint when it comes her old show “Martin” and whether or not some of the jokes lobbed against her character were laced with colorism. And what she has to say just might surprise you.
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If you’ll remember, this topic came up in August 2025 when singer Ari Lennox said that upon rewatching the popular 90s show, she felt as if some of the jokes Arnold’s character Pam received were a bit discriminatory due to her having darker skin.
“The thing that pissed me off about Martin was how much he was goin’ in on Pam,” Lennox said at the time. “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*cked up.’ There are some things where I draw the line. Pam was so f*cking 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.”
Now, in a new interview with with Deon Cole on his “Funny Knowing You” podcast, Arnold is acknowledging Lennox’s perspective but ultimately pushing back on the claims of colorism.
“I understand completely what she was trying—what she said. And I get it. She did do a disclaimer saying that she is like, uh, a sh*t-starter, I guess. Like, you know, she does cause controversy. I get it,” Arnold said.
She went on to explain how initially, Pam’s role was supposed to be for a heavier-set women, but when she was cast — the jokes had to change. After seeing how she and titular star Martin Lawrence would roast each other ruthlessly back and forth off-screen, the creative powers that be decided to incorporate that into the show instead.
“If you were around on Martin days and on that set, all the funny really happened when those cameras weren’t rolling. When I tell you, we would call—it was bad. Like, the way we used to crack. So, I used to be around a lot of gay men as well. So, my reads and my cracks were quick,” Arnold explained.
She later said: “So, the writers would see it. He had a bunch of his boys around, helping pump up the scripts and stuff and pump him up, and they just started incorporating. So, it was never, ever, ever came from a brown-skinned thing.”
Arnold went on to say that all the jokes were really “out of love” not out of malice and that they had “nothing to do with color.” She also suggested that the “Shea Butter Baby” singer go back and have a hard conversation with close friends or family members who could’ve possibly said or did something to her to where she was looking at the jokes through a different lens and not not “receive them in the spirit that they were given.”
What’s more is that Arnold also shared with Cole that during the first season of filming the show, her costar Tisha Campbell — who played Martin’s girlfriend Gina — used to get bad treatment from the women in their live audience. Arnold also explained that everyone cracked jokes on Campbell being so light-skinned as well.
“They did not want Martin having a girlfriend. She just so happened to be light-skinned. The way we used to crap on Tisha for being light-skinned, oh my God. It was bad,” Arnold said. “So we have jokes, but my relationship with that show was never, ever… those jokes were never written from malice. It was written from, who’s got the best jokes.”
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