Tyler Perry has always prided himself on being perpetually busy, pumping out projects left and right.
He is currently promoting his first film with Amazon, “Divorce in the Black,” which came out Thursday, July 11. It’s the first of four movies he promised to Amazon. This is on top of existing deals with Netflix and Paramount Global, which owns BET and BET+.
In his earlier years, he signed exclusive deals, first with Turner Broadcasting and TBS, then OWN, then Viacom (BET, Nickelodeon, TLC). But over time, that wasn’t enough for Perry.
Credit: AMAZON STUDIOS
Credit: AMAZON STUDIOS
“The exclusives were limiting in the sense I didn’t have enough work,” said Perry in a Zoom interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I wasn’t at 100% capacity. With Turner, I was at 20%. With OWN, I was at about 35%. At BET, that took me to 50%. There was so much more I wanted to do. I decided no more exclusives. I can do many things in many places. I’m glad to say I’m now at 90% capacity.”
Since January, he has shot eight TV shows and three movies but is planning a lighter schedule for the rest of the year. “I built in these breaks,’ he said. “I have turned over writing and directing to a lot of people at my studio … If I want to do another movie, I may, but mostly it’s rest and time with my son and being in the best space possible.”
He said he doesn’t have quite the stamina he did 20 years ago. “I’m 54,” he said. “How much more do I need to push?”
And if Perry is taking a breather, he spends time in his retreats in Wyoming and Los Angeles: “I love my home in Atlanta but it’s too close to the studio. I find myself going to work every day. I have to go away so I’m not tempted to drive in and find something to do.”
“Divorce in the Black” hearkens back to many of his earlier movies such as “Diary of a Mad Black Woman.”
‘This is vintage Tyler Perry,” Perry said. “It goes back to some of the stories where the church is so prevalent.”
Meagan Good (“Eve’s Bayou,” Deliver Us From Eva,” “Shazam!”) plays Ava, a middle-class bank employee long married to Dallas (Cory Hardrict), an unhappy alcoholic man who she falls in love with and thinks she can fix.
But after he divorces her, she retrenches to a farm 90 minutes outside of Atlanta with her happily married parents and like a Hallmark movie, she sparks a flame with a man she once knew played by Shannon Wallace who is much kinder than Dallas. For a time, all seems good. But in classic Tyler Perry fashion, all hell breaks loose.
“When people get divorced, there is so much trauma and heartache and sadness that is in the red. Bills. Debt,” Perry said. “But ‘Divorce in the Black’ means being free, being in a great space you can move on in your life.”
This is also the first time Perry has ever worked with Good, a veteran actress who has shot many films and TV show in Atlanta including “Think Like a Man” and “Stomp the Yard.”
“We wanted to work together for so many years,” Perry said. “The timing never worked out. She also is a producer in the film. It’s important to me like working with Kelly Rowland [who starred in and received executive producing credit in the recent Netflix film ‘Mea Culpa.’] I want to give these folks a shot at putting something else on their résumé. They have so much to lend to these stories.”
For instance, Good recommended Hardrict to play her husband Dallas: “Dallas is very special in his look and tone. Megan said he will kill it. From the first day on the set, I said, ‘OK, you are so right.’ I’m so happy she brought him in. It really works.”
The film also features character actor Debbi Morgan, best known for her Emmy-winning turn on “All My Children” in the 1980s, as Ava’s caring mom.
“Debbi saw me at a Beyoncé concert and a friend said she should go and say hi,” he said. “Debbi said, ‘He doesn’t like me.’ Her friend said, ‘How do you know?’ She said, ‘He never put me in anything.’”
But that wasn’t true. Perry told her he hadn’t put her in anything because he hadn’t yet found anything worthy of her. Soon after, he cast her in “Divorce in the Black” and they are working on another project. “She’s phenomenal,” he said.
The film opens with a wild scene at a church funeral involving an angry priest, an even angrier mother and a corpse. Perry said this is entirely made up but at the same time, “I’ve been going to Baptist churches for a long time. I’ve seen some things that make this look like a walk in the park … I have seen some arguments at funerals.”
For instance, he recalled being at an aunt’s funeral years ago and a woman who was not on the program insisted on speaking about his aunt. He remembered her saying: “She was a chubby lady with all her chubby children.”
“I am dying inside,” Perry said, “while some of the family was crying and trying to get her off the stage. I’ve seen some stuff.”
Perry made major headlines in February when he said he was not going to embark on a planned major expansion of his Tyler Perry Studios because of the impending growth of artificial intelligence. Six months later, he has not regretted that decision.
“I’ve seen some AI demos and it’s shockingly scary to me,” he said. “I’m extremely worried about the people I’ve trained in the business: grip, electric, hair, makeup, wardrobe. I’m extremely concerned about what is going to happen with this industry in four years. I hope I’m wrong.”
The lack of expansion at Tyler Perry Studios has also slowed plans for his planned public entertainment district by the studio featuring a museum and theater.
“It was contingent upon a lot more traffic coming to the studio,” Perry said. “We have thousands of cars coming in every month but the extension would have tripled that so the entertainment district would always be busy just with people working at the studio. I didn’t want to depend on people coming from outside areas to make it work.”
IF YOU WATCH
“Tyler Perry’s Divorce in the Black,” available on Amazon Prime
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