Tyler Perry is standing by his work.
The A Jazzman’s Blues writer/director, 53, appeared on a new episode of Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? where he addressed Spike Lee‘s past criticisms of his popular Madea character after host Chris Wallace asked Perry about Lee’s previous comments. Perry said he’s “heard it all” when it comes to backlash to the role, which he has played onstage and in films, as recently as A Madea Homecoming earlier this year.
Oscar winner Lee, 65, previously said he wasn’t on board with Perry’s portrayal of Black people and stereotypes. (They’ve since squashed their public disagreements.)
“There’s a certain part of our society, especially Black people in the culture, that they look down on certain things within the culture,” Perry told Wallace.
“For me, I love the movies that I’ve done because they are the people that I grew up with that I represent,” he continued. “Like, my mother would take me in the projects with her on the weekends. She’d play cards with these women. Most of them didn’t have a 12th grade education, but their stories and how much they loved each other and how when they’d get sad about something another would come in and make a joke. I’m 5 years old on the floor with my Matchbox cards. I was in a masterclass for my life.”
“So when someone says, ‘You’re harkening back to a point of our life that we don’t want to talk about it or we don’t want the world to see,’ you’re dismissing the stories of millions and millions of Black people. That’s why I think it’s been so successful because it resonates with a lot of us who know these women in these experiences and Uncle Joe and so on and so forth.”
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Perry said it also “goes back to the Harlem renaissance and Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. Langston Hughes said that Zora Neale Hurston was a new version of ‘the Darkie.’ Langston was northern, very sophisticated, Zora Neale from the South, her characters spoke in a Southern dialect. So this is a conversation that’s been going on long before Spike Lee and Tyler Perry. It is what it is.”
“But what is important to me is that I’m honoring the people that came up and taught and made me who I am,” said Perry. “Their stories deserve to be told too.”
At the Tribeca Film Festival in June, Perry briefly addressed his past disagreements with Lee during a wide-ranging Q&A with Gayle King. His Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta has 12 sound stages that are each named after Black artists who’ve “really inspired” him, including Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, Sidney Poitier — and Lee.
Perry said in June, “Spike Lee, who was very vocal about my work, yes. As I said, God bless all y’all; y’all do well. But I honored him because I don’t care what he said, how can I ignore his contributions … Had he not done what he did, I wouldn’t be here.”
The filmmaker also spoke out about Lee’s comments in a 2015 New York Magazine interview, saying, “You have to be careful, because our audiences cross-pollinate a lot of times. 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. 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?’ ”
In 2019, Lee celebrated Perry naming a soundstage after him. He wrote on Instagram alongside a photo smiling with Perry, “Ladies And Gentlemen, Boys And Girls – This Past Saturday Night My Brother TYLER PERRY Made History In Atlanta, Georgia With The Naming Of His Sound Stages. It Is With Honor And Humility That I Have A Stage Along With My Fellow Artists. Tyler, Da Whole Lee Family Thanks You. God Bless And Keep Keepin’ On Doin’ God’s Work. And Dat’s Da “BLACK MOGUL” Truth, Ruth.”
Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? airs Sundays at 7 p.m. ET on CNN and streams on HBO Max.
A Jazzman’s Blues is now streaming on Netflix.
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