Tyler Perry: Homeless to Hollywood entrepreneur

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Speaker 2 A quick heads up before we start. This episode contains discussions of child physical and sexual abuse, which some listeners may find distressing.

Speaker 2 A six-foot-five inch tall man squeezes himself into a small chair in front of a cracked mirror, grumbling as he applies dried-up theatrical makeup to his face.

Speaker 2 He swears this is the last time he's putting himself through this. For six years, he's been performing to almost empty auditoriums across the southern states of America.

Speaker 2 But it's cost him his life savings and made him homeless. Last night he had to sleep in his car.
He tries to talk to God, but he hears nothing. He's angry.
He says, I don't want to do this, God.

Speaker 2 Where are you? Where are you? But now, after years of silence, he suddenly hears God's voice again telling him to get up and look out the window.

Speaker 2 He peers out of the rain-soaked pane and sees people, lines of people, snaking around the block whilst an usher scrolls sold out across his play's worn-out poster.

Speaker 2 He thanks God, but he also knows that his hard work has finally paid off because this time he's understood exactly who his audience was and made his show just for them. This is it.

Speaker 2 Finally, people will hear his story.

Speaker 4 Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Each episode, we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money.

Speaker 2 We take them from zero to a million and then on from a million to a billion.

Speaker 4 My name is Zing Sing and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster.

Speaker 2 And I'm Simon Jack, the BBC's business editor.

Speaker 4 And that man in the theater was the American actor, filmmaker, playwright and studio mogo Tyler Perry.

Speaker 2 He's made $1.4 billion from over 30 feature films, 1700 TV episodes, 20 stage plays and he owns a 330 acre film studio in Atlanta, one of the biggest in the US.

Speaker 4 Talk about big numbers, so he's best known for his Medea comedy franchise, which features a gun-toting, Bible-misquoting grandma character who Perry has played in drag since 2000.

Speaker 2 But he's faced criticism throughout his career. Some, including the film director Spike Lee, have said his work relies on racial and gender stereotypes.

Speaker 4 Despite working in an A-list world with close friends including Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, Harry and Meghan Sussex, he is in fact Princess Lilibet's godfather. Wow.

Speaker 4 Tyler Perry is quite a private person.

Speaker 2 He said he'd rather be on his ranch in Wyoming watching eagles or flying remote-controlled planes with his young son.

Speaker 2 So let's go back and try and understand the man behind the mask, well, the wig and costume, and find out how Tyler Perry went from zero to his first million.

Speaker 2 Tyler Perry was born Emmett Perry Jr. in 1969 and grew up in a pretty modest house in New Orleans.

Speaker 2 The third of four children, Perry, said he always felt out of place growing up, sensing he was different from his family.

Speaker 2 His dad works as a construction worker and berated Perry for having book sense but no common sense, daily calling him a jackass.

Speaker 4 Sadly, that verbal abuse often turned physical.

Speaker 4 In the 2023 biographical documentary Maxine's Baby, the Tyler Perry story, Perry talks about how he and his mother endured brutal beatings from his father.

Speaker 4 One afternoon Perry's father asked him to change a tire and when he couldn't remove the nuts quickly enough his father beat him so badly that Perry blacked out.

Speaker 4 In the documentary the crew tried to approach Perry's father for comment but were unable to do so.

Speaker 2 Age 16, Perry changed his name from Emmett Jr. to Tyler to distance himself from his dad.

Speaker 4 Perry also suffered sexual abuse as a child by a neighbor when he was aged five and three other adults by the time he was 10 years old, which he revealed on Oprah Winfrey's show in 2010.

Speaker 4 He has described his childhood as a, in his words, living hell, and he says he only survived those turbulent times thanks to love from his mother and his strong Christian faith.

Speaker 4 But age 17, the anger and pain from his childhood trauma resulted in an altercation with with a teacher, which Perry himself has referred to as a nasty outburst, and he found himself kicked out of high school.

Speaker 2 So unsure of his future, confused, Perry thought perhaps he could be a pastor like his grandfather had been. So he attended seminary school for the next few years.

Speaker 2 But when he made the congregation laugh during a trial sermon that was supposed to be solemn, the pastor suggested he find a different career.

Speaker 4 Perry, for his part, was crushed. but the pastor assured him that God had called him to do something else.
But Perry was frustrated because at the time he didn't know what that something else was.

Speaker 4 So he applied for any job he could get, which included being a shoeshiner, a hotel janitor, and a used car salesman.

Speaker 2 By 1991, he's 22, he's got no real career plan, he's looking for a fun break, so he travels 460 miles north from his home in New Orleans, Louisiana, to Atlanta in Georgia to attend a famous street party called Freaknik.

Speaker 2 Freaknick had started as a spring break party for local black college students, but by the 90s it was drawing people from all across the states, helping to define Atlanta as a cultural hotbed.

Speaker 2 And this changes his life. The very next day, he heads home, packs up his belongings, and moves to Atlanta.

Speaker 4 He quickly found a place to live and he got a job, this time as a bill collector.

Speaker 4 So long hours, not exactly very fulfilling, but it earned him enough to live in the city he loved and to save a little money on the side too.

Speaker 4 Perry has said Atlanta felt aspirational and he later told Bloomberg he made the move because Atlanta has a heart that beats for black people, it beats for dreamers.

Speaker 4 And Atlanta is one of those really interesting cities in the United States, isn't it?

Speaker 2 It's got a real vibrancy. I haven't been there since the 1990s, so around the time that we're actually talking, I used to go there quite frequently.

Speaker 2 When I was there, it had a real sense of a city on the move, on the up and up. You know, it was in the run-up to the 96 Atlanta Olympics.

Speaker 4 Yeah, which provided a huge boost in tourism and infrastructure, in people actually knowing where Atlanta was and what it was all about.

Speaker 2 So a year after moving to Atlanta, Perry was watching TV one afternoon and he caught an episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Speaker 2 Oprah talked openly about the cathartic benefits of journaling, making a journal. So Perry started writing about his own traumatic past.

Speaker 4 But Perry didn't want people to know what he'd suffered so he used characters instead which quickly turned into a play and he told the Times that by writing about the character's abuse he felt his own shame and fur.

Speaker 2 So aged only 22 he decided to stage his debut play himself. He used his life savings of $12,000 to fund it and the play was called I Know I've Been Changed.

Speaker 2 It used comedy, drama and gospel songs to explore the dysfunctional lives of two adult survivors of child sexual abuse and over the next six years he performed the play in lots of various small theatres across the southern states.

Speaker 4 But it never took off. Often he only sold one ticket for performances and by 1998 he was losing so much money he couldn't pay his rent and he was forced to live in his car.
So he was ready to quit.

Speaker 4 He was so dejected he said he didn't care in his words if he lived or died.

Speaker 2 And then one of those moments we often see in billionaires, like a sort of freak act of fate or something, because a new promoter called him out of the blue and suggested staging Perry's play in a concert hall in downtown Atlanta that was reverting back to its former name, the Tabernacle, a reference to its former use as a church.

Speaker 2 Now for this run, Perry managed to convince a famous gospel singer, the Shun Pace, to open the show.

Speaker 2 And this is the very venue that we found Perry in at the start of this episode. And on that night, his show was a hit for the first time.

Speaker 2 So he changed his fortunes by finding the right venue and leaning into the gospel aspects, which helped him find his audience. And Perry said, My life shifted in that moment.

Speaker 2 It was the beginning of something that I wasn't prepared for because I had all this negativity in my life. Now I had a success for the first time.

Speaker 4 And soon Perry landed a national tour for his play on what was then called the Chitlin Circuit.

Speaker 2 What's a Chitlin Circuit?

Speaker 4 So a Chitlin Circuit is this kind of network of venues where black entertainers perform for a black audience, a for-us-by-us kind of theatre show.

Speaker 4 By the 90s, it began to be referred to more as urban theatre.

Speaker 4 Unfortunately, critics were often also dismissive of shows like Perry's because this was also called sometimes gospel theatre or gospel musicals because they were seen as contrived.

Speaker 4 Some people called it a glorified church service of comedy acts. I think a church service of comedy acts would be quite good.

Speaker 2 Yes, exactly. Well, it turned out that it was a good formula.
He was also on a mission to sort of legitimise, if you like, this art form.

Speaker 2 Previously, he'd designed the sets himself, set up lights, all the popping, done everything himself.

Speaker 2 But with his newfound success, he plowed some of the profits he'd made into upping the production values. He paid for new sets, he employed expert sound and lighting teams.

Speaker 4 And it worked. The Washington Post's critic Pamela Summers praised, I know I've been changed as one of the most hilarious and well-produced gospel theatre shows she'd seen.

Speaker 2 But Perry didn't completely shake off his one-man-ban instinct, as well as playing the main roles.

Speaker 2 For his next play, he'd also written himself a small role as a grandma character in drag with just a handful of lines.

Speaker 4 And he'd seen Eddie Murphy play older women in his nutty professor films I remember those and thought it'd be a bit of fun yeah those films were massive at the time yeah they were but when another actor didn't turn up to play her role Perry had that grandma character Medea which is from southern colloquialism for grandma you know mama dear take on extra lines so the grandma walk-on part which initially started as a bit of fun became a main role uh perry had never actually tried the costume or the wig in rehearsals.

Speaker 2 He said when he saw himself in the mirror for the first time before he went on stage he thought what the hell were you thinking and actually as in common with a lot of smash hits initially this character flopped in the 2023 biographical documentary maxine's baby colon the tyler perry story a fellow actor said perry called him early in the morning and said get up we're gonna fix it and what they did was they worked into the early hours they rewrote the scripts they practiced the jokes until they really honed down the medea role and reworked the play and by the end of the week word of Medea's appearance had spread, the show started selling out.

Speaker 2 So what was a flop they really worked on? I think it's so interesting. You know, it's quite easy to abandon something at that point, but they knuckled down and tried to make it work.

Speaker 2 And it was a success.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and sometimes, I mean, I'm thinking particularly of one of our other billionaires, George Lucas's character development for characters like Yoda.

Speaker 4 You can imagine when they first are presented, Yoda.

Speaker 2 Cut, cut, cut, exactly.

Speaker 4 You must have had to go through so much work to try and make that character fit into Star Wars.

Speaker 2 800 years old, Yubi.

Speaker 2 Anyway, tell us about Medea. What's she like?

Speaker 4 So if you haven't seen any of these Medea films, she's this kind of comically cantankerous, gun-toting matriarch. She ultimately is very caring.

Speaker 4 She loves her family, but you know, she doesn't pull her punches. And Perry says she's actually based on his own mother and his aunt.

Speaker 4 So, you know, there's a lot of love poured into this character, even though, as we'll see, some people later said, it was just a stereotype and a send-up.

Speaker 2 Perry said of playing Medea, I hate all the makeup and the wigs that come with the character, but the freedom to be able to say whatever I want, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 And by 2001, after rave reviews, sold-out shows, Perry's portrayal of Medea earned him a nomination for a big revered theatre accolade called the Helen Hayes Award.

Speaker 4 And soon Perry was touring his third play, producing plays for others and starting to make real money. We don't have exact sales figures, but tickets cost between $17 to $30.

Speaker 4 And Perry said at the time he was playing to 16,000 to 25,000 people every week.

Speaker 2 So doing the maths, that's somewhere between quarter of a million and three-quarters of a million dollars a week.

Speaker 4 Oh, I mean any theater producer.

Speaker 2 That's gross turnover. We've got to have our business heads on here.

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah. But I think any theatre producer would be happy with those figures.

Speaker 2 He's got to pay the theatres, the actors, the crew, etc. We don't know exactly what the profits were on that.
But he's not just making money from ticket sales.

Speaker 2 He's also selling videos and DVDs for his shows. And he very cleverly filmed his shows.
early on from his very first, they're not popular, production in 1992.

Speaker 2 He sold the videos and DVDs in the theater foyers after the shows. You'll be familiar with that kind of phenomenon.

Speaker 2 But in 2001, and this is forward-thinking, he launched his own website and started selling them directly from his online store. Now, 2001, that's a little bit ahead of the curve, I would say.

Speaker 4 In fact, I think in 2000, only about 42% of U.S. households were connected to the actual internet.
Wow. So, I mean, talk about being a visionary.

Speaker 2 That's incredible. And a few years later, he did a deal to sell his DVDs in sort of mom and pop stores like direct retail, right?

Speaker 4 Exactly. And he later said, when I started, a whole level of people weren't going to the theater.
We started raising awareness and getting the DVDs out there.

Speaker 4 People could see that if they spent their hard-earned money to go to my shows, they were going to have a good time. And he also crucially sold other merchandise.

Speaker 4 So he sold soundtrack CDs, t-shirts for $20,

Speaker 4 beefcake calendars of the male stars. I mean, talk about being entrepreneurial.

Speaker 2 And also hustling. The work ethic here is remarkable and something we may come back to, but he's really hustling here, pushing on every front.

Speaker 2 By 2001, Perry reported on his website that his production had grossed over $6 million.

Speaker 2 So, to celebrate after a performance one night, Perry asked his mother to come up onto the stage.

Speaker 2 To thank her for her part in his success, he presented her with a gift, keys to a brand new Jaguar car apparently she'd always wanted.

Speaker 2 In an interview with the New York Times, he revealed his gross sales had grown to $60 million by 2004.

Speaker 4 So, by the early 2000s, we can safely assume that Tyler Perry is a millionaire.

Speaker 2 Well done, Tyler Perry.

Speaker 4 And just through theatre alone, I mean, let's pause to kind of take stock of this because theatre is a notoriously loss-making industry.

Speaker 2 And this is like selling DVDs and t-shirts and soundtracks and calendars. That is pretty amazing.

Speaker 4 Yeah, the man is a one-man limes.

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 2 So let's go from a million to a billion. He's made it as a stage star, but he's got his eyes on something bigger: film, and not just DVDs of his own shows, real films.

Speaker 4 So he takes his third play, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, featuring his signature character Medea and a multi-generational family living together in Atlanta, and he takes it to Hollywood.

Speaker 4 He books some dates in LA, he invites industry players to come and see it. And he soon had meetings about a film adaptation of his latest play.

Speaker 4 But despite lots of meetings, no one actually wanted to greenlight a film version. They all said no.

Speaker 2 But one broadcasting icon had also been in Los Angeles's audience for Perry's play.

Speaker 2 And this is one of the billionaires we've covered in an earlier episode, and we've already mentioned today, which is Oprah Winfrey.

Speaker 2 Winfrey later told Forbes, I was aware of the traveling plays, but I never really took them seriously. But I went to see one in LA and I was not just moved by it, I was changed by it.

Speaker 2 Strong words, indeed. Weeks later, Oprah Winfrey invited Perry onto her talk show, and the pair have been friends ever since.
He's been on a show at least 10 times.

Speaker 2 A huge platform the Oprah Winfrey show particularly for the audience that he's trying to attract. Off-camera Winfrey gave Perry a bit of key advice and this runs throughout our billionaire series.

Speaker 2 Always write your own checks and always be fully in control. Remember Oprah's big money came when she started owning her own studio and earning the right to her own show.

Speaker 4 Exactly. So with Winfrey's sage words ringing in his ears, Perry met with another studio executive, but now he proposed a completely different film film deal.

Speaker 4 So, usually, film studios will put up most of the money to make a film and they'll keep most of the profits. And this makes sense, right? Because they are the people taking the most risk on board.

Speaker 4 Perry suggested to Lionsgate that he put up 50% of the money himself instead, and 50% from the studio in return for a 50-50 share of the profits, so split right down the middle.

Speaker 4 And the studio, as a bonus, could also deduct all the marketing costs for the film from Perry's cut because marketing is famously quite expensive.

Speaker 2 But not necessarily in his case.

Speaker 4 No, because by 2003 he had a mailing list of about 400,000 people from those plays, so he believed that he could be the one to push that film onto an audience.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he's got his own captive audience out there. He's going to keep that marketing budget down.

Speaker 2 Now, to sweeten the deal even more, Perry promised he could make the film for a very low budget of $5 million.

Speaker 2 At this time, the average budget for a Hollywood film was 10 times that, more than that, $60 million.

Speaker 2 The head of production at Lionsgate Film knew Perry was distributing impressive numbers of DVDs of his plays. But when he asked around his Hollywood contacts, no one had ever heard of Perry.

Speaker 2 But when he asked some black colleagues if they'd heard of him, they had. He quickly realised there was an audience that were being ignored, and Lionsgate signed the deal.

Speaker 4 I mean, this is so interesting that Tyler Perry was ready to risk his own money in order to have a bigger share of the profits and more control over what eventually would become a franchise.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because in a way, the studios have deep pockets. That's why they can afford to take a bit more risk, which is why they get a bit more profit.

Speaker 2 so going in there saying i'm going to be on the same terms as you is a ballsy move and must have flummoxed actually the studio a bit because who is this guy offering to pay half for his own movie we don't usually get that but it's all about owning a big slice of what you're actually making but the critics did not like it no on its cinematic release they absolutely ripped apart diary of a mad black woman so If you want to take a look at how bad the reviews were, you can go into Rotten Tomatoes, which kind of aggregates all these film reviews and gives it a score of 100%.

Speaker 4 So it currently has a score of 16%, which is phenomenally low. But never mind the critics, because this film was a hit anyway.

Speaker 2 Yeah, look at the numbers. Look at the box office.
Lionsgate only expected the film to gross $20 million,

Speaker 2 but it made $22 million on the opening weekend. That soon rose to $55 million.

Speaker 2 He also sold 2.4 million copies of the film on DVD. Panned by the critics, smash hit at the box office.

Speaker 2 You You know, the obvious thing to notice is that film critics are often white, often male, could not be further from the sensibilities which are being expressed in his films and previously his plays.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and could not be further away from the characters of the plays as well, so therefore have no kind of instinctive love for a character like Madea or her family. Exactly.

Speaker 2 But it was successful, and that success drew a lot of attention to Perry. Lionsgate signed him up to produce and direct two more feature films.

Speaker 2 Again, critics complained that his characters were stereotypes, but Perry's next film was also a hit with audience.

Speaker 2 It was called Medea's Family Reunion, had a budget of 6 million and grossed 63 million. That's the kind of numbers that studios love.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and Perry was already eyeing up another creator for it to conquer, wasn't he?

Speaker 2 Yeah, he was. When he'd been taking those fruitless movie meetings in LA, he'd also proposed making a TV series.
It had also been turned down.

Speaker 2 But now Perry felt it was the television network's turn to hear about a new deal.

Speaker 2 So he went back, decided to fund some episodes of a television series himself, same model, and then use these episodes to bag the rest of the funding to complete the series.

Speaker 4 But Perry wasn't going to just film one or two episodes. He was going to film 10 in a row.
And then he was going to ask the television networks for money to make 90 more episodes.

Speaker 4 Because, and this is really funny, when Perry had worked in a hotel in New Orleans, he'd snuck into a TV conference and he overheard someone say that 100 episodes was when a TV producer, i.e.

Speaker 4 him, would finally start to make a profit.

Speaker 2 So it's got to be a hundred.

Speaker 4 It's got to be a hundred.

Speaker 2 Unheard of at the time, this kind of deal. Usually in television, you pitch an idea.
I mean, if you've ever seen Seinfeld, the whole thing is about this.

Speaker 2 A television network commission a pilot, decide whether to fund it, make an entire series, then hopefully the series would eventually get syndicated, which means it's sold to networks all around the country.

Speaker 2 And that's when you start to make big money. So Perry's 1090 model meant if the 10 episodes were successful, the network would pay for 90 episodes.

Speaker 2 But if the ratings fell off, they still had to pay for the rest of the episodes because they were in a contract with him.

Speaker 4 So Perry wrote his first TV sitcom, House of Pain, spelt P-A-Y-N-E, drawing on what he knew his play and film audiences loved about his work, which was a multi-generational family living together in Atlanta.

Speaker 2 Hey, if it's not broken, why fix it? But the plots were more light-hearted?

Speaker 4 Yeah, exactly. They were funnier.
Medea only ever popped up as a special guest. She wasn't the main character.

Speaker 2 But for this plan, this 1090 plan to work the episodes needed to be cheap to produce so to keep costs down perry filmed in atlanta where he'd film feature films and he knew the area he rented some land he turned it into a sound stage he bought equipment applied for one of georgia's first filming tax credits this is where the state or some governments and national governments give you a little boost a little bonus in your tax bills um in order to encourage the creative industries to sort of set up there this reminds me of what they did in new zealand yeah exactly so for one of our other billionaires peter jackson who created Lord of the Rings, you know, those stunning landscapes of Middle-earth, that's all New Zealand because the New Zealand government were giving tax credits away like crazy to try and encourage people to come and film there.

Speaker 4 And it made a huge boost to their economy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it really worked, didn't it? I mean, it's probably the greatest example of

Speaker 2 tax credits for the creative arts actually changing the economy and certainly the tourism profile of New Zealand.

Speaker 4 If you want to visit Hobbiton, it's still there.

Speaker 2 Still there.

Speaker 4 So in 2006, Piri found a TV network who was willing to take a meeting about that 1090 deal. So this was a newly formed TV network called CW.

Speaker 4 They needed content fast, and Perry had 10 episodes good to go. So they signed a deal to air them.
And when House of Pain aired in 2007, it broke ratings records.

Speaker 4 So it got an average of over 5 million viewers for the first episode. So that was a first for that type of network.
It's on a small network. So it was a smash hit.

Speaker 2 Yeah, in fact, it was so successful. Another network, TBS, offered Perry $200 million to get him out of his contract with CW and to fund the next 90 episodes.

Speaker 4 That's right. And because Perry didn't have to pay a showrunner, a producer, big name actors, or a film studio, all those profits went to him.

Speaker 2 Perry is thought to have pocketed an estimated $138 million on the deal. What a windfall.
House of Pain ran for 11 seasons and over 250 episodes, so well above that magic 100 number. Exactly.

Speaker 2 And he soon got another commission for a spin-off television series, Meet the Browns.

Speaker 2 Now, this show was initially set in a nursing home, but soon shifted to, well, you guessed it, a multi-generational family living in the same house.

Speaker 4 Right. I mean, you know, he's got a formula and he sticks to it.
Sticking to it. And those television dues, like his film dues, were really bold.

Speaker 4 But by paying up front for himself for some of the budget, it's allowed Perry to keep ownership of that. intellectual property, aka IP.

Speaker 4 By owning everything he makes, he can negotiate lucrative distribution dues. He can ensure that there's a constant stream of revenue in the long term.
It's really clever.

Speaker 2 This is a common theme throughout our billionaires that one, owning the means of production, you know, whatever.

Speaker 2 But to do that, to negotiate that, like Oprah did with her Piranha lawyer, if you remember, you've got to have that kind of unshakable self-belief that you can make it work.

Speaker 4 I think in Tyler Perry's case, what is interesting is he also knew his audience inside and out. So he was able to ignore the fact that critics were saying...

Speaker 4 your films are awful, they're stereotypical.

Speaker 4 He was able to ignore studio executives who didn't think there was an audience for his work because he just understood the reception and the audience so well.

Speaker 2 But it wasn't a hit with everyone, as we've said. Perry's television success is what triggered criticism from Spike Lee, famous writer, director, and filmmaker.

Speaker 2 He was pretty scathing in his criticism. He suggested that Perry played up racial stereotypes.

Speaker 2 And the journalist and cultural critic Jamila Lemieux said Perry's shows were marked by old stereotypes of buffoonish, emasculated black men and crass, sassy black women.

Speaker 4 Now, in a 2024 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, a kind of venerable trade publication, Perry argued that his stories were part of a panoply of narratives.

Speaker 4 He said, you've got people like where I come from and me who are grinders, who really know what it's like, whose mothers were caregivers for white kids and were maids, housekeepers, beauticians.

Speaker 4 Don't discount these people and say their stories don't matter. Who are you to be able to say which black story is important or should be told? Pretty strong words.

Speaker 4 And although Perry has disagreed with his critics, he famously told Spike Lee to go to hell at the time. He's also made his peace with some of them.
When the writer Michael R.

Speaker 4 Jackson dismissed Tyler Perry's work in a script of his Pulitzer Prize-winning musical A Strange Loop, Perry still caught Jackson personally to congratulate him on winning the award.

Speaker 4 And in 2019, when he was naming sound stages at his film studio after key black names in film, he named one after Spikely.

Speaker 2 I think that's pretty classy. Even though he'd been kind of roundly criticized by Spikely, he still named one of his stages after him, taking the higher ground, the moral high high ground.

Speaker 2 And by 2008, Perry was indeed riding high because in October he opened his first purpose-built film studio in southwest Atlanta.

Speaker 2 At the opening night, Sidney Poitier said, Sidney Poitier, I mean, trail-blazing black actor, first black actor to win an Oscar. Exactly.

Speaker 2 I've spent 56 years in this business and tonight is the reward to see people who've followed me and to see the success of this man is a real gift. High praise indeed.

Speaker 4 But not everyone was celebrating because outside the building, in earshot of the festivities going on, there was a small group shouting, Tyler Perry Has No Shame. Ooh.

Speaker 4 These people were protesting the alleged firing of four guild writers from House of Pain.

Speaker 4 These writers had been pushing to unionise the writers on the show so they could get health and pension benefits. And a Perry spokesman at the time said four of the show's seven writers were let go.

Speaker 4 A month later, however, after talking with the group, Tyler Perry agreed to work with the Writers Guild and allow unionised writers on his shows, although crucially, not the four people who'd been let go.

Speaker 2 Now, we've already mentioned this once, but I think it might be a good time to return to the extraordinary work ethic of Tyler Perry. He's famous for intense work schedules.

Speaker 2 What takes Hollywood years, Tyler Perry seems to be able to do in months or even weeks. He once filmed a 22-episode TV series in 11 days.
And I work a little bit in TV sometimes. I can tell you.

Speaker 4 I don't know what it's like. I do that.

Speaker 2 That's just making a two-minute VT for the 10 o'clock news, and that takes all day. So how they did 22-episode TV series in 11 days.

Speaker 4 Really hope your manager isn't listening to this and thinking, wait a second.

Speaker 2 Yes, exactly. Anyway, he can multitask because while his television series was taking off, he was producing and starring in between two and four feature films a year alongside Stage Plays 2.

Speaker 2 An episode of Donald Glover's TV series Atlanta is called Work Ethic and features a media mogul thought to be based on the more obsessive side of Tyler Perry.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's a very funny episode actually. I remember watching it and it features one of the characters going to work on a TV show show, not unlike House of Pain.

Speaker 4 And there is this invisible media mogul who talks through speakers all around the studio because he's omniscient like God.

Speaker 2 Okay, but Perry puts his success down to his work ethic and has also said in interviews that he values hungry employees over talented employees.

Speaker 4 He does, however, you know, admit his work might have impacted his personal life. He said, I'm not so sure with this kind of work ethic what kind of husband I'd be.
He's never married.

Speaker 4 He was in a long-term relationship with the model and documentary filmmaker filmmaker Galila Bakili from around 2009 to 2020. And together they share a son whom Perry co-parents with Bacchilli.

Speaker 2 But going back to 2014, Perry realized that he'd outgrown his film studio and he purchased a big plot of land to build a whole new complex.

Speaker 4 That's right. And this one would be over 10 times bigger than his first studio.

Speaker 4 That site would go on to become one of the biggest film studios in America and the largest to be wholly owned by an African-American.

Speaker 4 Also, a former military base used by the Confederate Army during the Civil War. That's interesting.
So, in one sense, a deeply ironic and maybe cosmically just way of using the site.

Speaker 2 Yes, he purchased two-thirds of the 500-acre site for $30 million.

Speaker 2 The purchase and the development, though, had its critics.

Speaker 2 The entire site value was estimated to be worth $75 million to the community, and so they felt it was a bargain for Perry, a bit of a sweetheart deal, if you like.

Speaker 2 And it was reported that Atlanta taxpayers would have to fund a half a million dollar road because Tyler Perry Studios would close all public access to existing major streets.

Speaker 4 Also important to note that the studios actually have brought in business. So in 2016, before they were even fully built, a TV show called The Walking Dead, which was massive, filmed there.

Speaker 4 And in 2019, both Coming to America 2 and Bad Boys 3 filmed at Perry Studios at the same time.

Speaker 4 Will Smith posted a photo of himself and his co-star Martin Lawrence, Eddie Murphy, and Wesley Snipes all together.

Speaker 2 Black film acting royalty, really.

Speaker 4 Exactly.

Speaker 4 So the film lot, if you're wondering what it looks like, has 12 sound stages, massive, and many fully built film sets, including a residential neighborhood named Maxineville after his mother, an airport terminal, a stripmore, two baseball fields, a golf course, a near exact replica of the White House, which apparently is so true to life that it was used as a secret service training exercise

Speaker 4 in 2023. So if you see the same neighborhood pop up in a different TV show, you'll know that's Maxineville.

Speaker 2 With all this, by 2020, Perry's wealth has risen to be $1 billion, according to Ford's, and they put him on the front cover of their magazine. They broke down his wealth.

Speaker 2 A third of his fortunes come from his back catalogue, film, TV, and plays, a third from Tyler Perry Film Studios, and a third from other investments.

Speaker 4 So, by holding on to that IP and investing his profits and building his own film studio, Perry has become a billionaire.

Speaker 2 So, let's take him beyond a billion. Remember, he became a billionaire during the COVID-19 pandemic.
That was a time when many film and TV studios closed, leaving staff without work.

Speaker 2 But Perry created something called camp quarantine at his studio to keep over 300 cast and crew working. I've heard this from other film producers actually.

Speaker 2 I've got a couple of mates who work in this business, and they said that they actually had these kind of

Speaker 2 hermetically sealed communities of people working on films. No one could come in, no one could go out.
So as long as everyone tested negative inside it, you could carry on working in that environment.

Speaker 2 He invested $18 million in private flights, medical staff, PPE equipment and COVID testing to allow staff to stay at the studio during the filming.

Speaker 4 So a whole endeavor. But just before the pandemic, there was also big moves for his character Medea.

Speaker 4 He'd actually talked about retiring her, but after signing a massive deal with Netflix, he played her in 2022's Medea Homecoming. And that was a success.

Speaker 4 It soared right away to the top of Netflix's most watched list. And then it stayed in the top 10 in 33 countries.

Speaker 2 So, his attempt to sort of leave Medea behind him, Netflix said, No way, buddy, no, that's too popular. Put that makeup back on.

Speaker 2 In 2023, he signed a new deal with Netflix for eight more feature films over four years for an undisclosed amount. And in 2025, TV channel BET announced a new season of television series Sistas.

Speaker 4 In June 2025, however, it was reported that Tyler Perry was being sued for $260 million by an actor named Derek Dixon, who accused Perry of sexually assaulting him while he worked on the TV series The Oval and Ruthless.

Speaker 4 Dixon spoke to The Hollywood Reporter in July 2025 about the lawsuit, saying he felt compelled to go public because, in his words, everyone deserves to go to work and do their job without their boss trying to have sex with them.

Speaker 4 Perry's lawyer denied the allegations and called the lawsuit a scam to make money. And at the time of recording this, the case is ongoing and no other accusations have been made.

Speaker 2 And this is where we have a bunch of categories, wealth, controversy, giving back, power and legacy.

Speaker 2 And we score Tyler Perry, as with all our billionaires, from zero to 10 on these different categories. And we're going to start with wealth.

Speaker 4 Well, the Netflix deal is undisclosed, as Netflix deals often are. He also saved himself some $800 million, apparently, when he stopped building a new studio after seeing what could be done with AI.

Speaker 4 So are we going to see AI Medea soon? Time will tell.

Speaker 2 It's interesting that, isn't it? Just holding back on investing in new stuff. We'll see what's possible with AI.

Speaker 2 I mean, clearly that's going to change the creative arts in ways that people wouldn't have thought possible just a few years ago but on wealth he's just over a billion dollars so I mean he creeps in at entry level onto this but we also like to look at the trajectory of getting to there you know whether it's a rags to riches story as it was in Oprah and I think this qualifies and there he was sleeping in his car and still plugging away with his play often playing to an audience of one

Speaker 2 really demoralizing must have thought there was going to be no hope so actually to achieve what he's achieved, I think it's pretty remarkable.

Speaker 2 So although I'd give him a one in just absolute wealth, on the trajectory of where he's come from, I'm going to give him a five.

Speaker 4 Oh, I think I'm going to go higher than that. You know, because if you go even further back and look at his childhood, you know, he had a really tough upbringing.
He suffered sexual abuse. Yeah.

Speaker 4 And then he goes on to basically become one of the most powerful men in Hollywood.

Speaker 4 It is quite the journey. So I think I'd actually give him a seven out of ten.

Speaker 2 Okay, seven for you, five for me.

Speaker 4 Now, let's talk about controversy. So, we mentioned earlier that there's a lawsuit against Perry, but as of this recording, it hasn't gone to court yet, so the details are still limited.

Speaker 4 So for now, we'll focus on what we do know about him.

Speaker 2 We've talked a little bit about this, about his continuing use of what some describe stereotypes,

Speaker 2 arguing that cross-dressing often serves to reinforce clichés. His female protagonists are always downtrodden.
And some would say that undercuts the very audience he aims to celebrate.

Speaker 4 I mean, those are all kind of definitely critiques you could make of his films. Also, important to note that he's also faced some plagiarism lawsuits for his work.

Speaker 4 So, in 2008, Donna West took Perry to court, claiming that Diary of a Mad Black Woman was a copy of her play, Fantasy of a Black Woman. She lost the case.

Speaker 4 There have also been other lawsuits, but they've all ruled in his favour. Right.

Speaker 2 Okay, I mean, what does that amount to? Some people don't like his films?

Speaker 4 Some people don't like his films, and some people think he copies.

Speaker 2 Yeah, all right. I think that, you know, compared to the controls who we've had from some of our other other billionaires, I think this is small beer.
I'm going to give him...

Speaker 2 Oh, there was a thing about letting those writers go as well because they wanted to, they're agitating for union membership.

Speaker 2 And the controversy stakes, the fact that some people don't like his movies and think they're plagiarized a bit, I give them a two max.

Speaker 4 To be honest, I'd probably go even lower, like maybe one out of ten, because, you know. If you don't like a film, that is kind of a subjective experience, really.

Speaker 4 And clearly there is an audience for these kind of plays and TV shows and films. Otherwise, he wouldn't be so successful.

Speaker 2 Okay, two for me, one for you. Giving back, this is sort of philanthropy, charitable stuff.

Speaker 4 What do we know? He's actually done pretty well, I think. So he's got a foundation.
He started it in 2006. He supports community projects in Atlanta alongside projects in rural Africa.

Speaker 4 This is really interesting. He donates directly to local people when there's a crisis.

Speaker 4 He paid for the groceries of elderly shoppers in 73 shops in Atlanta and paid 42 restaurant workers a $500 tip each during COVID. So, you know, he's not averse to opening his own wallet directly.

Speaker 2 In 2023, he paid $2.75 million to seniors living near his studios who are struggling with rising property taxes. And in 2021, he received an honorary Oscar for his humanitarian work.

Speaker 2 So, I mean, you know, perhaps people who know more than us have recognised his work.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and definitely he seems to be, and I always rate this quite highly when it comes to humanitarian work.

Speaker 4 He's very tapped into his local community in the same way that Oprah gives back to her local community.

Speaker 2 The Academy said the award was for Perry's cultural influence, which is, you know, as we've already heard, you know, cuts both ways sometimes, because he is steadily focused on humanitarian and social justice causes from the beginning of his career, caring for people who are most often ignored.

Speaker 2 So he's got a score pretty highly now. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think I would give him a seven out of ten. Although maybe if you look at the exact numbers, the numbers don't stack up.

Speaker 2 I mean, how much is that? You know, if you added all that lot up out of a thousand million dollars, it's not huge. I'm going to give him a six.

Speaker 4 Okay, so he could do better. Okay.
What about power and legacy?

Speaker 2 Well, I think he's a hugely important figure in black cinema, isn't he? You know, and not just black cinema, in wider cinema in terms of his success. I mean, he brought a new audience.

Speaker 2 He knew who it was. And presumably he, I imagine he's

Speaker 2 a hero, an idol for a lot of young people wanting to break into that business. And he's created tons of jobs.
In 2007, $67 million was spent on film productions in the state of Georgia.

Speaker 2 In 2018, that figure was 2.9 billion. Wow.
So that is huge. And it accounts for 17,800 jobs.
That's a 370% increase from back in 2001. And Tyler Perry, a big part of that.

Speaker 4 I mean, if I was the state of Georgia, I would be getting down on my hands and knees and thanking Tyler Perry.

Speaker 2 There must be some kind of Georgia medal they can give him. I'm sure they have already.

Speaker 2 So I'm going to score him pretty highly for this. I think he's become a very important player and role model for others.
And also, I admire his work ethic enormously.

Speaker 2 So for power and legacy, I'm going to give him a six.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think I would actually give him slightly higher.

Speaker 4 So I would give him a seven out of ten because I think if you just looked at the Medea character, the stuff he's produced, you might be able to say, okay, well, you know, here's a guy who knew what his audience wanted to see, what they'd pay money for.

Speaker 4 He did really well. It wasn't to everyone's taste.
End of story.

Speaker 4 But the fact he's gone and plowed that profit back into studios, into creating a whole ecosystem and infrastructure for, you know, black actors, for black filmmakers, I'm going to give him a seven out of ten, I think.

Speaker 2 Okay, you've talked me up to a seven too. So I'll be a seven as well.
To sum it up, here's a person who was directionless, going nowhere, but flogging his guts out, trying to

Speaker 2 make what he thought was an important art form successful and just a combination of self-belief and hard work and and risk-taking in the early days.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think it's so interesting if you go back and listen to the Oprah Winfrey episode that both him and Oprah got rich through building studios.

Speaker 4 So it's all about infrastructure really if you want to get ahead in the movie business. That's right.

Speaker 2 And our view of the golden age of Hollywood is all about the kind of you know the blushing starlets and the handsome actors but the people who really had the money were the Louis B.

Speaker 2 Mayers and the you know Sam Goldwyns and the studio bosses. Those are the people who really really made the money.
And so he's managed to move into that league against the odds.

Speaker 2 So now it's time for you to judge Tyler Perry. Is he good, bad, or just another billionaire?

Speaker 4 That's right. We want to hear what you think of our media mogul.
Why not drop us an email at goodbadbillionaire at bbc.com or drop us a text at all WhatsApp to 0019176861176.

Speaker 2 That's goodbadbillionaire or one word at bbc.com or 001-917-686-1176.

Speaker 4 In the Diane Hendricks episode, we asked any listeners from Beloit, where she's based, to get in touch.

Speaker 4 So, Joanne got in touch to say, I am a regular listener of the podcast, and you will not believe my surprise to see Diane Hendricks as the topic. I am a lifelong Beloiter.

Speaker 4 I can't believe the call-out work.

Speaker 4 So, you missed a lot of her philanthropy, which is done through her family foundation.

Speaker 4 In my opinion, one of the most generous and impactful things the foundation has done is financially backing an independent independent charter school, the Lincoln Academy.

Speaker 4 You may see Diane on the first day of school watching the kids excitedly enter the building. Tell her good morning and she will return the response in her friendly Midwest manner.

Speaker 4 Thank you so much for getting in touch all the way from Beloit, Joanne.

Speaker 2 Thank you, Joanne. Stephen, a Brit living in Florida who ran one of Diane's businesses, sent a long email.
So here are some of the highlights.

Speaker 2 He says, I would rate Diane as an extremely good billionaire. There can be no doubt that what Diane has done for Beloit has been hugely beneficial for the city.

Speaker 2 The impressive thing is that all these efforts are designed to be self-sustaining and profitable, not charitable handouts.

Speaker 2 She very much believes in the concept that if you give someone a fish, they'll be fed for a day. If you teach them how to fish, they can feed themselves for a lifetime.

Speaker 2 Keep up the good work on your podcast, which my wife and I very much enjoy, even if we don't agree with a few of your conclusions. That's fine, Stephen, and thank you for getting in touch.

Speaker 4 Renee from Glasgow says, although I admire Diane Hendrix as a woman who has proven herself equal to men in the world of billionaires, I have to place my vote that she is a bad billionaire.

Speaker 4 She's done very little to improve the lives of people struggling to attain their own version of the American dream. Instead, she has bought her way into mainstream politics.

Speaker 2 Another listener also says Diane Hendrix is a bad billionaire, saying, Her political causes, such as turning Wisconsin red and making it a right-to-work state, certainly don't endear her to me.

Speaker 2 But maybe I feel that way about all billionaires. They seem to be in a race to the bottom by way of who's got the most.

Speaker 4 And Nia from Ecuador, who is just 11 years old, getting in there early Nia, says, I love your podcast. I've made all my family listen to it.

Speaker 4 I think Diane Hendrix is just another billionaire, a very interesting one, but just another billionaire.

Speaker 2 Thank you, Nia, and thank you for getting the rest of the family to listen in.

Speaker 4 Who do we have on the next episode of the show?

Speaker 2 An absolutely brilliant story which takes in Benite Mussolini, post-war Italy, Four Millawan, Beta Dolce Vita, some Vespers.

Speaker 4 Princess Diana as a fan of the family.

Speaker 2 Princess Diana is an influencer. This is the story of Luciano Bennetton.

Speaker 4 Yes, the founder of the high street fashion brand that also bears his name.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and courted controversy with some iconic images for their advertising and marketing in the 80s and 90s.

Speaker 4 That's Luciano Bennett on the next episode of Good Bad Billionaire.

Speaker 2 Good Bad Billionaire is a BBC World Service podcast produced by Tamzin Curry.

Speaker 4 The editor is Paul Smith and it's a BBC Studios production. For the BBC World Service, the commissioning editor is John Minnell.

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