Who's Afraid of Tyler Perry?
Growing up within the community I was in, being a black person in the Atlanta area, the people here in the 2000s and 2010s worshipped Tyler Perry, and if you said anything negative about his work, you were made out to be a hater, or you just didn’t understand his craft.
It all came back to this idea that we were trying to bring a black man down and that we were just jealous of his wealth and success. When I was still heavily involved with theater and the acting scene in the late 2010s, when Tyler Perry was brought up, you were shunned if you mentioned you didn’t care for his work. I used to attend this actors' meet-up. They always used Tyler Perry scripts to practice with, and the special guests were usually actors Tyler Perry would cast in his productions. I noticed this type of hesitation came from the fact that many black actors and content creators want to have a chance with Tyler Perry because they know he’s a part of the handful of Hollywood that hires black people.
Since the pandemic, people have no longer been shy about expressing their genuinely strong feelings about him. But those who wish to work with him and his devoted fanbase still act as if we are just……
“Hating on a successful black man.”
So, who’s afraid of Tyler Perry?
Let’s make this clear: I do not think Tyler Perry is untalented at all. He’s good at acting and has had numerous roles outside of his productions. He’s pretty well-established in the entertainment industry, and I think it’s a great thing that he pays Black actors their worth. That being said, this is coming from someone who was a fan of his works from the 2000s and early 2010s, and I am a bit disheartened by what his work has turned into.
I was a huge fan of House of Payne growing up, and I would be so excited to come home from school to watch the new episodes and catch up on the ones I hadn’t seen. Meet the Browns gave me a good laugh, and I loved watching Logan Browning and Robert Ri'chard. For Better or Worse was what I enjoyed when I wanted to watch something about messy rich people. Diary of a Mad Black Woman is a personal favorite of mine because it focuses on Black feminine rage.
Diary of a Mad Black Woman is Tyler Perry’s first film, and to keep it a buck, it’s one of his best works. Despite the flaws of the film involving colorism, ableism, fatphobia, and the plot bouncing around a lot, it’s watchable and enjoyable. As this is the movie that started his filmmaking career, people give it a pass because, for someone’s first mid-budget film, it’s decent and had a lot of heart and care put into it. There is a significant decline in quality and care in what he releases now with bigger budgets.
Earlier in 2024, Tyler Perry released Mea Culpa, and I had mixed feelings about it, more so on the negative side. For one, I was glad that Tyler Perry finally made a film that wasn’t so focused on the Black church and went the erotic thriller route ( I love thrillers, by the way), with art being a significant factor. The film was beautifully shot, and the story had much more potential to be better than what it was if the pacing wasn’t so slow. Mea Culpa, like many other newer Tyler Perry productions, feels like a rough draft with no editing.
While Mea Culpa was disappointing, his most recent film, Divorce in the Black, has me and many other people working up. Divorce in the Black is just plain awful. It’s not much different from films he has put out in the past, about a black woman being abused, finding a new man, and being involved in Christianity. This film was unwatchable. It was straight-up boring and soulless. Tyler Perry himself doesn’t care that his movie has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s beyond professional film critics disliking it; content creators have gotten sick of this laziness, too.
That’s why this upset me so much. He has the potential to make better films and shows. He claimed that he only creates for his fanbase. As someone who used to be a part of that fanbase, I know this is not the kind of work he made that got him support in the 90s and 2000s. Was the work perfect back then? No. But there was care put into it. Now, it’s as if he’s just making movies and shows simply because it will make him richer than he already is.
It feels as though Tyler Perry no longer cares about the kind of art he is making, not only for his supporters but also for black actors. His fans will simply watch the awful work because they stand ten toes down for him. The number of up-and-coming black actors I have encountered over the years who worship this man and desperately want to be cast in one of his productions is concerning. Even the well-established Black actors we all know of are willing to work with this man.
Just because he hires black actors, pays well, and “gives back” to the community doesn’t mean his fans and who he casts should get characterless work. Tyler Perry is capable of making good things; he’s just choosing not to. The community surrounding him is why that’s not going to change; they enable it.