50 Fun Facts About Tyler Perry

In Diary of a Mad Black Woman, which tool does Madea use to wreck the mansion's living room furniture?

A chainsaw is Madea's weapon of choice when she and her granddaughter Helen vandalize the mansion, and the spree lands the repeat offender under house arrest.

Which royal couple did Tyler Perry house for three months before becoming their daughter's godfather?

Harry and Meghan had lost their British royal protection when Perry lent them a home and security, a favor they made public in a televised interview the following year.

Tyler Perry took over the role of detective Alex Cross in 2012 from which Oscar-winning actor?

Morgan Freeman had played James Patterson's detective before the series was rebooted with Perry; critics panned the new film and a planned sequel was cancelled.

Which TV doctor makes a cameo running Madea's anger management course in Madea Goes to Jail?

Dr. Phil McGraw's sessions do not take: the judge had ordered the therapy after freeing Madea because the arresting officers never read her rights.

Which reality star won a Razzie for her role in Perry's Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor?

Kim Kardashian played Ava and was named Worst Supporting Actress, while Perry himself was nominated for Worst Director at the same Razzies.

Which Marvel blockbuster was the first film shot on the new sound stages at Tyler Perry Studios?

Black Panther filmed there before the studio's 2019 grand opening, and Perry broke the news himself on Instagram.

Which real political figure did Tyler Perry portray in Vice, the 2018 biographical comedy about Dick Cheney?

Colin Powell was Perry's part in Adam McKay's satire, which stars Christian Bale as Cheney and Amy Adams as his wife Lynne.

After a Pennsylvania swim club turned away 65 day-camp children in 2009, Tyler Perry paid to send them where?

Walt Disney World was the treat for the Philadelphia campers; Perry wrote that for every act of evil thrown at them, millions more people would do something kind.

Which British actor plays the mechanic fighting for custody in Tyler Perry's Daddy's Little Girls?

Idris Elba starred opposite Gabrielle Union in the first film Perry directed without appearing in it himself.

Madea's 2006 bestselling book has a title warning against making a Black woman take off which accessories?

Her earrings coming off means trouble in Perry's first book, written in Madea's voice, which topped the New York Times list and won Book of the Year at the 2006 Quill Awards.

In which Southern city was Tyler Perry born in 1969?

New Orleans is where Perry grew up before he moved to Atlanta around 1990, the city where he staged his first play and later built his studios.

At 16, Tyler Perry legally dropped which first name to distance himself from his abusive father?

Emmitt was the name he shared with the man who raised him; a DNA test Perry took as an adult later indicated that the elder Perry was not his biological father.

Which talk show host's episode about writing as therapy inspired Tyler Perry to begin writing letters to himself?

Oprah Winfrey's show set him writing the letters that became his first musical, and two decades later the pair signed a deal for him to make scripted series for her network.

Which gospel musical, Tyler Perry's first play, did he stage in 1992 with his $12,000 life savings?

I Know I've Been Changed flopped at first, and Perry spent six years rewriting it before a 1998 restaging in Atlanta finally turned it into a touring hit.

Tyler Perry built his following touring plays on which informally named network of Black theaters?

The Chitlin' Circuit, which sustained Black performers through segregation, carried Perry's plays to audiences who had bought more than $100 million in tickets by 2005.

Which magazine ranked Tyler Perry the highest-paid man in entertainment in 2011, with $130 million in a year?

Forbes counted $130 million earned between May 2010 and May 2011, and in 2020 the same magazine declared Perry a billionaire.

Which honorary Oscar, earlier given to Debbie Reynolds and Geena Davis, did Tyler Perry receive in 2021?

The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award honours outstanding contributions to good causes, and Perry shared the 2021 prize with the Motion Picture & Television Fund.

Which former US Army post in Atlanta did Tyler Perry buy in 2015 and turn into film studios?

Fort McPherson closed in 2011, and Perry's 330 acres of it now hold a dozen sound stages named after celebrated African American entertainers.

Tyler Perry drew criticism in 2020 for revealing that his shows run without which standard TV institution?

A writers' room has no place on his shows: Perry said he writes every script himself, which critics said shuts out emerging Black writers and he defended as keeping one voice.

Which fellow filmmaker publicly attacked the imagery in Tyler Perry's comedies in 2009, drawing a pointed reply?

Spike Lee's complaint drew the answer that Madea works because audiences see in her the strong Black women they already know.

Tyler Perry has called Madea a PG version of which two women from his own family?

His mother and aunt, Perry said, would beat you but make sure the ambulance got there in time, because the love was inside all of it.

Madea made her stage debut in the 1999 play I Can Do Bad All by Myself in which city?

Chicago met a Madea who was 68 years old in that first play; the 2009 film that borrows its title tells a different story.

What is the real first name of Madea, the tough grandmother Tyler Perry has played since 1999?

Mabel Earlene Simmons is her full name, and a later play names the woman who bore her as Big Mabel Murphy.

Besides Madea, Tyler Perry plays her brother, the father of lawyer Brian Simmons, under which first name?

Joe Simmons finally got top billing in Joe's College Road Trip, a 2026 film in the franchise that makes Madea's brother the star instead of her.

Which daughter of Madea, a devout churchgoer played by Tamela Mann, was long presented as Mr. Brown's child?

Cora Simmons came from a one-night stand, and Mr. Brown was long presented as her father until a paternity test in the film Madea's Big Happy Family said otherwise.

Which actor plays Mr. Brown, the lead character of Tyler Perry's sitcom Meet the Browns?

David Mann created Leroy Brown in Perry's stage plays, and the actress who plays the character's daughter is his real-life wife.

Which real-life Divorce Court judge sentences Madea to house arrest in Diary of a Mad Black Woman?

Mablean Ephriam presided over Divorce Court from 1999 to 2006 without ever having served as a judge, and she returned to the bench in later Madea films.

In Madea Goes to Jail, what does Madea use to wreck the car of a woman who stole her parking spot?

A forklift lets her lift the woman's sports car out of the Kmart space and wreck it, and this time a judge gives her five to ten years.

Which future Modern Family star plays Madea's cellmate, a serial killer, in Madea Goes to Jail?

Sofía Vergara plays T.T., and it was her second Tyler Perry film, coming a year after she co-starred in Meet the Browns.

The idea for Boo! A Madea Halloween began as a made-up movie in which comedian's 2014 film Top Five?

Chris Rock invented a Madea Halloween movie as a gag in his comedy, and two years later Perry made it for real and it grossed $74.8 million.

Which pop superstar plays psychologist Patricia Agnew in Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?

Janet Jackson returned to the part in the 2010 sequel, which moved the four couples' marriage retreat from the mountains to the Bahamas.

In which David Fincher thriller was Tyler Perry cast against type as defense lawyer Tanner Bolt?

Gone Girl came his way after Fincher noticed him in Alex Cross, and Perry's turn as the attorney for accused husbands was singled out by critics.

Which 2009 sci-fi film gave Tyler Perry his first screen role outside his own projects?

Star Trek director J. J. Abrams asked for him personally, and Perry appeared as Admiral Barnett, the head of Starfleet Academy.

Tyler Perry played mad scientist Baxter Stockman in a 2016 sequel from which franchise?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows made him the ally of the armoured villain Shredder in a plot to take over New York City.

In which 2021 comet satire does Tyler Perry co-host the morning show The Daily Rip beside Cate Blanchett?

Don't Look Up reunited him with director Adam McKay, who had cast him three years earlier in Vice.

Which 2010 drama, adapted from Ntozake Shange's choreopoem, was the first R-rated film Tyler Perry directed?

For Colored Girls put ten Black actresses, Whoopi Goldberg and Kerry Washington among them, into a project first lined up for another director, Nzingha Stewart.

Which 2009 film, promoted by Tyler Perry after Sundance, led him to reveal his own childhood abuse?

Precious had won the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize at Sundance before Perry put his name and his company behind promoting it.

Tyler Perry's war drama The Six Triple Eight follows an all-Black women's battalion clearing a backlog of what?

Soldiers' mail had piled up by the millions: the real 6888th Battalion found some 17 million items waiting in Birmingham, England, and cleared them in three months, half the time allowed.

Which actress plays Melinda, the wife who stalks her newly successful ex-husband, in Tyler Perry's Acrimony?

Taraji P. Henson had already led Perry's film I Can Do Bad All by Myself as a hard-drinking nightclub singer, nine years before this thriller.

Which Oscar winner plays wealthy socialite Charlotte Cartwright opposite Alfre Woodard in The Family That Preys?

Kathy Bates's socialite sweeps her working-class best friend off on a road trip in a vintage convertible, with no route and no schedule.

Which patriarch, played by LaVan Davis, heads the multi-generational Atlanta household in House of Payne?

Curtis Payne and his wife Ella take in their nephew's family after a house fire, and the couple later got their own retirement spin-off, The Paynes.

Which cable network signed Tyler Perry to a $200 million, 100-episode deal for House of Payne?

TBS ordered the 100 episodes after a ten-show test run, and the first two it aired in June 2007 broke the cable record for a sitcom audience.

House of Payne overtook which 253-episode show for the most episodes of any sitcom with a mainly Black cast?

The Jeffersons held the mark until House of Payne reached 254 episodes at the end of its sixth season, and a 2020 revival has added well over a hundred more.

In which Georgia city is Tyler Perry's long-running soap opera The Haves and the Have Nots set?

Savannah's old-money society frames the feud between the rich Cryer and Harrington families and the Youngs, whose head, Hanna, works as the Cryers' maid.

Zatima, about the couple Zac and Fatima, is a spin-off of which Tyler Perry comedy-drama?

Sistas launched in 2019, and three years later the pair's new life as a couple, complete with secrets and exes, became a series of its own.

Which 2014 Tyler Perry film was spun off into the drama series If Loving You Is Wrong?

The Single Moms Club reached cinemas in March 2014, and the hour-long drama it inspired was on television by that September.

Which animated series mocked Tyler Perry through a cross-dressing playwright named Winston Jerome in the episode Pause?

The Boondocks so angered Perry that he complained to executives at the company airing his own sitcoms, and after one encore the episode stayed off the air for almost ten years.

In Good Deeds, Tyler Perry's wealthy CEO falls for a struggling cleaner played by which actress?

Thandiwe Newton, credited then as Thandie, plays Lindsey, a janitor facing eviction who meets the boss after parking in his reserved space.

Which actress stars as struggling factory worker Brenda in Tyler Perry's 2008 film Meet the Browns?

Angela Bassett's Brenda travels to Georgia for the funeral of a father she never met, while Madea's part in the film is a high-speed police chase.

Which comic actor plays George Needleman, the CFO whose family hides out with Madea in Madea's Witness Protection?

Eugene Levy's clueless executive discovers that his firm has been running a Ponzi scheme, so the FBI puts his whole family into hiding.