Few billionaires have endured years of childhood abuse,
homelessness, and racism, but these things are all true
of the actor behind Madea. These are just a few of the tragic details about Tyler Perry.
As a child, Tyler Perry was subjected to horrendous abuse at the hands of his father,
Emmitt Perry Sr. The Perry patriarch frequently inflicted extreme violence upon his son. In 2009,
Perry opened up about the abuse in an essay penned on his website, writing,
"He was drunk, as he was most of the time. He got
the vacuum cleaner extension cord and trapped me in a room and beat me [...]"
Emmitt Perry Sr. had his own tragic backstory. As Tyler Perry explained to Oprah, his father
was abandoned as a child — discovered in a drainage canal when he was just 2. Subsequently,
he was given to a 14-year-old girl, and, as Perry highlighted on the show,
"This girl's parents only knew to beat her, so what she knew was to beat my father. Beat,
humiliate, ridicule, all his life. So this is what I was born into."
At one point, when Perry was a toddler,
his mom managed to grab her kids and run away from her violent husband. However,
his father eventually found them and beat his mom. Perry was actually born Emmitt Perry Jr.,
but changed his name to distance himself from the man who made his childhood a living hell.
For years, Tyler Perry repressed
memories of the abuse he suffered as a child. But after watching the Oscar-winning film Precious,
which he produced, his childhood trauma was triggered. As he wrote on his website in 2009,
"[A] large part of my childhood had just played out before my eyes."
In the film, the 16-year-old title character is sexually abused by her own father on a regular
basis. This brought back painful memories of Perry's own childhood sexual abuse. He
revealed to Oprah that he was sexually abused on a number of occasions. When he was just
"6 or 7," Perry recalled, he was assaulted by a man who lived across the street from his family.
The man was entrusted with the youngster's care and the two were supposed to build a
birdhouse together, but he took advantage of Perry in the most horrific way.
As he explained to Oprah, he didn't tell anyone about the assault because he said
he "felt completely guilty about it". Perry told Ebony that he was exposed to things that no child
should ever have to face; he didn't even know what sex was. When he was 10, Perry revealed
in his essay, he was abused again by a friend's mother, who attempted to seduce the young boy.
Then, he was sexually assaulted by the father of another friend. Perry later told People:
"It was rape."
Facing a barrage of abuse on a regular basis,
Terry Perry considered suicide a number of times. As a 2013 study highlights,
suicidal ideation is prevalent among child abuse survivors. As Perry explained to Oprah,
the relentless abuse left him wondering what the point of being alive was. However, it was his
love for his mother and devout faith that got him through those darkest moments. Perry told Oprah:
"My mother was truly my saving grace [...] I would see my mother smiling in the choir,
and I wanted to know this God that made her so happy.
If I had not had that faith in my life, I don't know where I would be right now."
One of the most difficult aspects of surviving abuse, he told Oprah,
was living a life dominated by his own trauma. Eventually, he was able to acknowledge that,
while the abuse was significant, it did not define him. Subsequently,
having come out through the darkness, Perry wants to reassure others with suicidal
ideation that things can get better. In an interview with Ebony, Perry had this to say:
"I tell people, if you're thinking about suicide, all that stuff, I've attempted and
thought about it. If you think about it, life gets better [...] Just keep moving."
"Because just behind all of that darkness I see hope."
According to Perry, One of the most devastating consequences of child abuse is that victims are
led to believe nobody loves them, that they were abused because they're inherently unlovable.
In a heartbreaking admission to Oprah, Tyler Perry expressed his own experience with these feelings:
"I remember being a kid and praying in the hell of my house
to have somebody love me and somebody that I could love."
In a separate interview with Oprah, he divulged that he was tormented by the
fact that his own father "despised" him, something that he struggled to fathom.
"I could not figure out why he hated me so."
Unfortunately, it wasn't just his father who damaged his self-esteem. Although Perry adored
his mother and the pair remained close, she could also be cruel at times. When Perry expressed his
desire to make it to Hollywood, she attempted to discourage him. Perry told the Los Angeles Times:
"My mother said to me, 'You are never going to make it, so stop what you're doing.'"
Perry did defy his family's low expectations,
however. In fact, he excelled beyond his own wildest dreams.
At school, the creatively
inclined Tyler Perry excelled. But his academic success was marred by ongoing
trauma. Rather than being proud of his academically adept child,
Perry Sr. berated his son, his intellect being yet another excuse for abuse. Perry revealed to Oprah:
"He would scream at me, [...] 'You got book sense but you don't have no street sense!'
Cause he hated the fact that I would read and draw and get straight A's in school."
For the young Perry, being constantly torn down led to his own volatile behavior. Subsequently,
he told Oprah, he was kicked out of school when he said "some pretty nasty things" to a counselor,
noting that he was overwhelmed with anger due to the abuse. The Hill points out that it's
often difficult for male survivors of child sexual abuse to open up about their trauma,
which may help to explain Perry's destructive behaviors prior to unburdening himself
of the truth. After being kicked out of high school, Perry decided to channel his anger into
writing a play about child sexual abuse survivors, entitled I Know I've Been Changed. He told Forbes,
"You got to understand,
I had no mentors [...] Everything I've learned, I've learned in progress."
Forgiveness is a challenging concept for anyone who has endured abuse,
particularly when it is inflicted by one's own family. As Tyler Perry admitted to Ebony,
the horrors of his home life initially instilled in him a sense of hopelessness,
leaving his childhood in pieces. Perry told the outlet:
"I look at people who don't really understand
what that does to a child [...] When that happens, it completely destroys your world."
His first play, I Know I've Been Changed, was a healthy outlet for him.
As Perry explained to Variety, writing it was a catalyst for major changes in his life:
"It was about adult survivors of child abuse who have forgiven their abusers
and I hadn't forgiven my father. Once I forgave him, the show took off."
I was able to forgive him in my, in my, mid-20s and that changed my life."
In an interview with Essence, he acknowledged how easily abuse can
shape a person's life for the worse, noting,
"[A person] can be completely ashamed of [trauma and be destroyed by it],
or you can take the power out of it by using it as a teaching tool to help others."
Ultimately, Perry decided on the latter. Speaking with People,
he elaborated on how he was able to make that difficult road to recovery. He explained that
through extensive prayers he could come to terms with what he had endured, and forgive.
"I think that forgiveness is beyond important."
After leaving high school, Tyler Perry decided to relocate to Atlanta,
but he soon found himself struggling. During a press junket for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2,
Perry revealed that he put all his money into a play, but hardly anyone showed up,
leaving him homeless. Destitute, he slept in his car. Despite this dark period in his life,
Perry has been able to reflect upon it with gentle humor, joking to Essence:
"Can you imagine a six-foot-five man sleeping in a Geo Metro?"
As noted in Ebony, he attempted to collect pennies to find food for the
week: a $1 pack of cookies. But he was determined to get out of the situation,
which he did by inventing the iconic Madea. On Facebook, he observed an Atlanta highway sign
that now bore the name of his eponymous studio, evidence of how far he has come. Perry wrote:
"Atlanta has truly been the promised land for me. I came here with nothing [...] ended
up homeless and starving, but I was always praying and believing."
As chronicled by Forbes, Perry went from homeless to billionaire, earning over $1.4
billion between 2005 and 2020, in the outlet's estimation. Reflecting on his impoverished roots,
Perry told Forbes that having been "poor as hell" makes his success all the more meaningful.
Tyler Perry was close friends with Whitney
Houston and felt a strong sense of responsibility for her wellbeing. In 2013, he explained to Oprah,
"I felt a responsibility to do all I could to help her because I
sensed…that there is a death day coming."
As noted in the interview, Perry tried his hardest to get Houston the help she needed,
but, tragically, she died in 2012 at the age of 48.
To honor his promise to protect his late friend, Perry aided the singer's daughter,
Bobbi Kristina Brown, when she wanted to embark on an acting career. Perry told Oprah:
"At the studio, there is this tremendous net of safety. It's an eagle's nest for
anybody who wants to come into Tyler Perry Studios and work. It is not a place to stay;
it is a place to come in, learn to fly, and soar, so I wanted her to feel that."
Moreover, Perry explained that he gave Brown roles to help her stay
safe and secure. Although Perry gave Brown a safe space,
she, too, was troubled. In 2015, she died at the age of just 22 in circumstances that
were eerily similar to her mother's death. When she died, Perry poignantly tweeted,
"I'm a writer with no words."
From an early age, Tyler Perry was exposed to the realities of prevalent racial injustice.
Speaking with Variety, he recalled feeling furious when his father would make $800 as a contractor,
but his white boss would make $80,000 from selling houses. Perry told the outlet:
"I never understood why my father didn't sell his own houses [...] So watching that happen,
I knew from a young age that I wanted to be the man who owned the house."
While the Madea character — and Perry's films in general — have faced intense criticism,
Perry has long emphasized that he believes creating a Black-owned media empire
is instrumental in dismantling the racism of the film industry. Perry told Forbes:
"Ownership changes everything."
With regard to starting a career in the film industry, he told Variety in an earlier interview,
"Hollywood wanted nothing to do with me."
He went on to recount the bigotry he was subjected to by white execs, which propelled him to create
his own studio. The filmmaker recalled an instance in which a white studio head claimed,
"Black people who go to church don't go to movies, so this will never work."
"I clearly believe that I'm ignored in Hollywood, for sure, and that's fine."
Yet, as Perry noted to Variety:
"[I was] seeing thousands of people all over the country come out for these shows."
Despite his vast fame, riches, and accolades, Perry still faces racism,
explaining to People that, as a Black man,
it was his duty to prepare his son for the "harsh realities" of racial discrimination.
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