Tyler Perry's latest feature film scored a rare 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, a point he apparently doesn't care much about.
The billionaire filmmaker, best known for his franchise character Made aHe is much more interested in the opinions of his fans than those of “intellectual” critics, he said in the “Honey, this is Keke Palmer” podcast.
“For all the critics,” Perry said on Tuesday’s episode, “I have thousands of emails from people saying, ‘This changed my life. Oh my God, you know me. Oh my God, you saw me. How did you know this about my life and my family?’ So that’s what’s important.”
Criticism of Perry and his supposedly flat depictions of black characters dates back to his early days as a director. Spike Lee, for example, in 2009 famously referenced Perry's work while complaining about the “buffoonery” In black comedy. Most recently, playwright Michael R. Jackson took on the movie mogul in his metafictional musical. “A strange loop.”
In the number “Tyler Perry writes about real life” Jackson's protagonist—a Broadway usher who dreams of being a writer—denounces Perry's work: “The trash he puts on stage, film and television / Makes my bile wanna rise!”
The song wasn't born out of any “personal vendetta,” Jackson told Washington Post Live in 2022. “It's really about taking Tyler Perry's work very seriously, because it's often looked at, often by Black communities, as sort of, the end-all-be-all of what you can do as a Black artist.”
“I just wanted to problematize it and satirize it,” he said.
When Palmer referenced Jackson's musical commentary, Perry told the podcast host, “I know for a fact that what I'm doing is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.”
When it comes to critics in general, he continued, it's best to “drown all that out.”
“They were talking [about] “There’s a big portion of my fans who are marginalized, who can’t get in the Volvo and go to therapy on the weekend,” he said. “So you have this [Black critic] “that everything is up in the air with their noses up looking at everything, and then you have people like where I come from, and I, who are fighters, who really know what it is like, whose mothers were caregivers for white children, and they were maids and housewives.”
She added: “Don’t dismiss these people and say their stories don’t matter. Who are you to say what black history is important or should be told? Get out of here with that shit.”
Corey Hardic, who co-stars in Perry's latest film, “Divorce in the Black,” last week invoked a similar defense On the critical bombshell: “I mean, people love the movie and we make it for the people, that’s who we make it for. If the culture agrees, it’s all love. So it’s fine.”
Perry's comments on the podcast have already generated backlash online, with Preston Mitchum of the reality show “Summer House: Martha's Vineyard” writing Wednesday on X“Yes, because writing and producing a film about a small-town black woman who cheated on her husband, contracted HIV, and then ended up physically disabled is absolutely the groundbreaking black story we need to see.”
Mitchum’s post apparently refers to Perry’s 2013 film, “Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor.”
Palmer defended Perry against other online detractors, writing Wednesday in X“The enemy is not Tyler, it is the system that makes it difficult for several black artists to do what they want.[s] shine at a given moment.”
“Tyler is not the keeper of all Black stories, he’s just a creative who worked his way through the system,” she wrote. “The fight is to advocate for others to do the same, not to hate Tyler for his work, which many love.”
Perry celebrated the grand opening of his 330-acre estate in 2019. Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta. He created the complex in hopes of promoting cultural diversity in the film industry, he said. The times in 2016.
“Sometimes I drive alone and think, ‘Is this too much or is this what I’m supposed to do?’” Perry said. “The answer is obvious. When this fell into my hands, I was like, ‘I have to do it. ’ This is the ultimate goal.”
