Why Meghan's billionaire friend Tyler Perry is too big to cancel

Telegraph

4 days ago

He's one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood, but he's never received an Oscar nomination, is rarely mentioned in the same breath as Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt or Meryl Streep and almost certainly won't be arriving at a multiplex near you. His name is Tyler Perry, and this already preposterously wealthy celebrity is about to become a lot more famous – for all the wrong reasons.
With a net worth of $1.5 billion, Perry isn't so much a star as a one-person celebrity constellation. He writes and acts in low-brow, high-profit, straight-to-streaming comedies, is a top content provider for Netflix and Paramount's Black Entertainment Television and a powerful producer. He even owns his own studio – a sprawling 330-acre facility in suburban Atlanta, Georgia, which counts Marvel and indie powerhouse A24 amongst its clients. He's also a friend of the Sussexes and their daughter Lillibet's godfather – a point that may become awkward in light of a $260 million sexual harassment case by actor Derek Dixon.
Dixon claims Perry created 'a coercive, sexually exploitative dynamic' relationship while Dixon was appearing in two of Perry's BET shows, The Oval and Ruthless. Lawyers for the actor say Perry promised to make him a star only to escalate 'sexual harassment, assault and battery'. They further claim that Perry then targeted Dixon for 'professional retaliation' when his advances were spurned.
Perry denies the accusations and said he would not be subject to a 'shakedown'. 'This is an individual who got close to Tyler Perry for what now appears to be nothing more than setting up a scam,' his attorney said. 'But Tyler will not be shaken down and we are confident these fabricated claims of harassment will fail.'
The allegations are a rare speed bump for the 55-year-old high-school dropout, who has upended the Hollywood system – and perhaps circumvented its institutionalised racism– by creating his own parallel Tinsel Town in Georgia. Remarkably, he has done all this while carving out a parallel career as a mainstream actor – impressing with parts in David Fincher's nihilist break-up thriller Gone Girl, playing Colin Powell in Adam McKay's White House satire Vice and acting opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in eco tragicomedy Don't Look Up.
However, acting in major Hollywood features is merely a side project for Perry, who has become a one-person content machine. He has directed more than 20 films (with a combined box office well north of a billion) and, since 2017, has churned out entertainment for BET – including hits such as Sistas (think an African American Sex and the City) and the aforementioned The Oval, a tale of corruption and skulduggery in the White House.
He has been equally prolific for Netflix since entering a first-look production arrangement with the streamer in 2023. This year alone, he will release five new Netflix projects – including a 'reboot' of the Bible story of Ruth and Boaz set in modern-day Tennessee, called R&B, and series two of Beauty in Black, a Succession-type tale of an African American family that has made a fortune from the comics industry.
Of all his upcoming features, however, the one fans are most eagerly anticipating is Madea's Destination Wedding, the latest of his preposterously successful bawdy comedies centred around his alter ego of Madea – a sort of African-American version of Mrs Brown's Boys (it is telling that Perry is a huge fan of Mrs Brown and invited Brendan O'Carroll to collaborate in his previous entry in the series, 2022's A Madea Homecoming).
Perry debuted Madea in 1999 with a theatre show built around his gender-flipped character – a 'tough street-wise elderly African-American'. First on stage and later on the screen, Madea was a phenomenon. Perry describes her as 'the PG version of my mother and my aunt, and I loved having an opportunity to pay homage to them. She would beat the hell out of you but make sure the ambulance got there in time to make sure they could set your arm back'.
Many in the African American community saw something of their own families in the character – while responding, as audiences everywhere are wont to do, to the broad humour and single-entendre gags. The Mrs Brown comparisons were also reflected in the reaction of critics – who derided Madea as naff, unfunny and the lowest-denominator.
Prominent African-Americans were especially scathing, feeling that Perry was playing to negative stereotypes about their community. Spike Lee, director of Do The Right Thing and BlacKkKlansman, accused Perry of 'c---nery and buffoonery'. 'If a white director put out this product, the black audience would be appalled,' said the writer Donald Bogle.
But Perry, who grew up with an abusive father in New Orleans (only to later learn that the man was not his biological parent), has never paid attention to his critics. He has always seen Madea as a means to an end – and a way to a passport to a position of power and influence in the film industry.
The franchise, over which he maintains 100 per cent ownership, has made him staggeringly wealthy – the first Madea movie, 2005's Diary of a Mad Black Woman, earned $50.7 million while costing $5.5 million to make. Perry certainly lives well: he owns multiple properties across the United States, along with a private island in the Bahamas and a private jet.
His real ambition, though, has been to build a production empire. The first black person to own and operate a major film studio, he has constructed a 330-acre production facility in Atlanta, emblazoned with the motto 'A Place Where Even Dreams Can Believe'. It's where he shot A Madea Homecoming – the Brendan O'Carroll collaboration that became Netflix's most-watched movie of 2022. Other features filmed there include The Walking Dead, Marvel's Black Panther and its 2022 sequel, Wakanda Forever.
A man of many talents, he's also a celebrity of many friends. He's close to Oprah Winfrey, Janet Jackson and Will Smith (after Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars, it was Perry and Denzel Washington who took him aside, pleading with him to calm down). He's chummy, too, with Meghan and Harry and featured prominently in their 2022 Netflix documentary.
Perry first reached out to the Sussexes shortly before they tied the knot in 2018, when Meghan's feud with her father, Thomas Markle, was all over the media. 'He sent a letter,' recalls Meghan in the final episode of Harry & Meghan, her 2022 Netflix documentary. 'He said he was praying for me.'
'I'm not a royal watcher. I don't pay attention to that stuff,' said Perry, who appears in Meghan & Harry and compares the treatment of the couple to the emotional abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother growing up in Louisiana. 'I saw something about her father. When my life changed… family members became different people... I know how horrible that can be.'
Perry played a central role in the relocation of the Sussexes to the US. In February 2020, the Canadian government announced it would no longer provide security for Harry and Meghan, who feared they would be besieged by paparazzi or worse. Which was when they were contacted by Perry, who offered the use of his $18 million Beverly Hills mansion and the protection of his security team (Harry and Meghan would subsequently set up in their own property at nearby Montecito).
The 24,545 square-foot Mediterranean-style mansion sits on 22 acres. It features eight bedrooms and 12 bathrooms, plus a Grecian-style sunken bath and a bespoke nursery originally designed for Perry's son Aman (Oprah Winfrey is his Godmother). It is located in a gated community of just 14 residences, with a guard on duty 24 hours a day. The mansion was built in 2012; Harry and Meghan stayed there for three months in spring 2020.
There's no getting around the fact that Perry is a hack and purveyor of cheap laughs. He is also an artist. In 2022, the same year he yucked it up with Mrs Brown in A Madea Homecoming, Perry wrote and directed A Jazzman's Blues – a moving exploration of racial division in the American South that has been compared to Schindler's List.
But he also produced the Oscar-nominated film Precious in 2009 and, in 2021, filmed a public information video encouraging the African American community to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Imagine if Benny Hill and Steven Spielberg were the same person – and that they were best friends with prominent scions of the Royals.
As is often the case with outrageously driven individuals, he has his demons. In 2014, Perry's then-partner, Gelila, gave birth to their son, Aman. However, in 2020, he described himself as a 'bachelor'. He has spoken about his struggles with depression, saying he had attempted suicide on several occasions before his career took off.
Still, he's never apologised for who he is and appears unruffled by criticism, even when levelled by a figure of the prominence of Spike Lee. 'If I was a white man and had done these things…they would have had a much different reaction to me,' Lee told the New York Times in 2019. 'No one, black or white, has been able to do what I've been able to do.'
Could a harassment lawsuit undo a lifetime of against-the-odds accomplishments? It remains to be seen, though judging by the tone of his denials, Perry does not come across as unduly worried. That is the sort of confidence that comes with absolute power – and with a billion-plus net worth and his own studio, Perry undoubtedly has more clout than almost anyone else in Hollywood. In an industry full of oversized figures, he is among the biggest of them all.