A conversation with Tyler Perry

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Oct. 29, 2016 (Gephardt Daily) — Tyler Perry is a busy man. His new film, “Tyler Perry’s Boo! A Madea Halloween,” was released in theaters last weekend and opened at No 1.

Gephardt Daily’s Tony Toscano caught up to the actor, producer, director and chatted about the new film as well as what Perry’s next project will be.

Perry was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, as Emmitt Perry Jr.

Many years later, after seeing the film “Precious,” he was moved to relate for the first time accounts of being molested by a friend’s mother at age 10. He was also molested by three men prior to this, and later learned his own father had molested his friend.

A DNA test Perry took in 2010 stated that Emmitt Sr. was not Perry’s biological father.

In his early 20s, watching an episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” he heard someone describe the sometimes therapeutic effect the act of writing can have, enabling the author to work out his or her own problems.

This comment inspired him to apply himself to a career in writing. He soon started writing a series of letters to himself, which became the basis for the musical “I Know I’ve Been Changed.”

“I Know I’ve Been Changed” was first performed at a community theater in 1992, financed by the 22-year-old Perry’s $12,000 life savings. The play included Christian themes of forgiveness, dignity, and self-worth, while addressing issues such as child abuse and dysfunctional families.

In 1998, at age 28, he succeeded in retooling the play and restaging it in Atlanta, first at the House of Blues, then at the Fox Theatre. Perry continued to create new stage productions, touring with them on the so-called “chitlin’ circuit” (now also known as the “urban theater circuit”) and developing a large, devoted following among African-American audiences.

In 2005, Forbes reported he had sold “more than $100 million in tickets, $30 million in videos of his shows and an estimated $20 million in merchandise” and “the 300 live shows he produces each year are attended by an average of 35,000 people a week”

Perry raised a US $5.5 million budget in part from the ticket sales of his stage productions to fund his first movie, “Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” which went on to gross $50.6 million domestically, but scored just 16 percent approval rating at the film review web site Rotten Tomatoes.

On its opening weekend, Feb. 24 through 26, 2006, Perry’s film version of “Madea’s Family Reunion” opened at No. 1 at the box office with $30.3 million. The film eventually grossed $65 million.

Perry’s next project, “Daddy’s Little Girls,” starred Gabrielle Union and Idris Elba and was released in the United States on Feb. 14, 2007. It grossed over $31 million.

Over the next few years, Perry wrote, directed, produced and starred in three more films earning a total of $78.6 million dollars domestically.

Recently the website ‘Richest Celebrities‘ valued Tyler Perry net worth at $450.0 million.

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