Tyler Perry has a multi-million dollar movie empire, which has helped put him in the position as one of the highest paid men in the entertainment industry but, that has not stopped the world from criticizing his movies.
Despite making so much money, the former Atlanta homeless man has faced criticism from people who think his characters exploit the black community by featuring stereotypical characters.
In a new profile in New York magazine, Tyler Perry says that he’s surprised by the people who criticize his movies. “Let me tell you what took me aback about that, when people were like, ‘How dare you put fat black people on television, these are caricatures, these are stereotypes’ — I was so offended because my aunt’s fat. My mother’s fat. My cousins are fat,” he told New York’s Rembert Browne. “People who are like, ‘How dare you — these harken back to Mammy, Amos ’n’ Andy.’ I would hear all these things, and I would go, hmmm.”
In a 2009 intervie with Black Enterprise, Spike Lee called Tyler Perry’s TV shows Meet the Browns and House of Payne as “coonery and buffoonery.” Tyler Perry responded by saying, “I’m so sick of hearing about damn Spike Lee. Spike can go straight to hell! You can print that. I am sick of him talking about me. I am sick of him saying, ‘this is a coon, this is a buffoon.’ I am sick of him talking about Black people going to see movies. This is what he said: ‘You vote by what you see,’ as if Black people don’t know what they want to see.”
Even though the two have since settled their differences, the 46-year-old opened up in the interview about how Lee’s comments had an affect on his audience. “There’s a lot of my audience that likes what he does. And there’s a lot of his audience that likes what I do,” he said. “And when you make those kind of broad, general strokes, and you paint your audiences in them, they go, ‘Wait a minute, are you talking about me? Are you talking about my mom?’”
Tyler Perry is currently filming his new movie A Madea Halloween in Atlanta, Georgia. If you are interested in joining the cast and crew of the new Tyler Perry movie, check out the latest Atlanta casting calls here.
Read more of Tyler Perry’s New York magazine profile here.
