For someone making a name in scary movies, Tyriq Withers doesn’t sound afraid of much. At least, not anymore. “Growing up, I was always afraid of horror movies,” he laughs, recalling how Jeepers Creepers left him shampooing with one eye open. “Now that I get to make them, I absolutely love it.” This year, Withers stars in two upcoming slashers—I Know What You Did Last Summer and Him—both of which trade in suspense, but also offer something deeper: “We’re all just tapping into our little kid imagination,” he says. “You really need to unlock that part of your brain to work in this genre.” Fear, as it turns out, is fertile ground.

Withers, whose background includes football and YouTube sketch comedy, is now navigating the sharp tonal turns of a career in ascension. In Him, a campy horror flick produced by Jordan Peele, he plays a gifted but haunted quarterback alongside comedian Marlon Wayans, a role that required weeks of intensive emotional and physical training, six days a week, twice a day. That hunger plays against a softer, riskier register in Reminders of Him (releasing next year, and not to be confused with Him), a romantic drama that, for Withers, proved more unsettling than any slasher. “I felt at my most vulnerable,” he says. “There’s nothing to hide behind but the performance.” Ironically, he adds, “It was scarier to make than the horror films.”

He’s thoughtful about what these roles have unlocked, emotionally, psychologically, and even spiritually. “I always say that my whole life has been an identity crisis,” Withers reflects, not with self-pity but with the clarity of someone who has started to enjoy the search. “I think each character and story that I’m able to be a part of helps me discover a little bit more about who Tyriq really is.”

This story appears in the pages of VMAN 55: now available for purchase!

Photography Isaac Anthony 

Fashion Arut Arustamyan

Editor Charles Kolbrener

Text / Interview Penny Spiliotopoulos

Grooming Peter Gray (Home Agency) using Oway USA

Location WSA Studio

Photo Assistants Isaac Schell, Anthony Lorelli

Fashion Assistants Abel Martirosyan, Erika Bennett, Adlet Bermukhamedov