Tyler Perry's immeasurable love for his mom: 'When she died, everything in me died'
Filmmaker Tyler Perry knows nothing compares to the love of a good mother.
The life of the director, actor, producer, and playwright is told in Amazon Prime's “Maxine's Baby: The Tyler Perry Story" (now streaming). The documentary, dedicated to Willie Maxine Perry, takes its title from the final scene in which Perry, who has been asked to share what defines him, replies, “I’m Tyler Perry, and I’m Maxine’s baby.”
Directors Armani Ortiz and Gelila Bekele filmed Perry over a decade. Bekele and Perry welcomed Aman Tyler Perry in 2014 but have since split. The directors interviewed the “Madea” star, as well as his famous friends including Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King, and documented milestones in Perry’s career, such as the opening of his historic film studios.
“I think he's been misunderstood for a long time, and he's been also dismissed as that one character he created (Madea),” says Bekele, referencing the colorful elderly woman Perry has played in several comedy movies, inspired, in part, by Perry's mom. “But the origin for all of the inspiration ... was important.”
Ortiz says he didn't expect the documentary would take 10 years to complete, but they "had to gain and earn that trust" with Perry.
In “Maxine’s Baby,” Perry discusses the mental and physical abuse he endured from his father, Emmitt Perry Sr. (Perry has also opened up in the past about being sexually abused as a child.)
More revelations from the documentary:
Tyler Perry brings Madeaout of retirement, addresses TV criticisms
Perry’s coping mechanism for surviving his dad’s abuse
Perry’s cousin, Lucky Johnson, offers filmmakers a tour of Perry’s childhood home in New Orleans, pointing out where he would hide from his father’s incessant abuse.
Perry, 54, says that to escape his father's wrath or being molested by adults he knew, he would “go in my mind to a different place,” imagining homes and yards with “the tiniest detail.”
“People ask, ‘How can you write 20 scripts in two weeks?’” Perry says in the film. “For what some think is weird or strange, for me, it’s just being able to access a place that I created as a kid to help me cope that now is the very thing that is sustaining a lot of what I’m doing.”
How Maxine inspired her son, Tyler Perry
“As a little boy, watching all that she had gone through, I wanted to do everything I could, making sure that she wasn’t in pain. Making sure that she had money and could leave this man was my whole desire,” Perry says in “Maxine’s Baby.”
In footage from his 2019 acceptance speech for BET’s Ultimate Icon Award, Perry shared how imitating his mother’s female friends would make her laugh after his dad had verbally and physically abused her. He added: “My first 10 movies were all about her, subconsciously, wanting her to know that she’s worthy, wanting Black women to know, 'You’re worthy, you’re special, you’re powerful, you’re amazing.'”
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From being homeless to getting a break: ‘My life shifted in that moment’
Perry moved to Atlanta in 1991, and pursued his dream of being a playwright, renting a theater for his production "I Know I've Been Changed." One weekend, during a hurricane, he had no audience for a play performance, and spewed his anger at God: “Every time I step out here to do these plays, you leave me.”
His mother expressed her desire for Perry to have more financial security, but he continued for seven years.
When he was 28, he was asked to perform his play at the House of Blues, and his fortune changed: Guests lined up to get in, and the venue was packed. "My life shifted in that moment."
The devastating loss of Perry’s mom: ‘Everything in me died’
Maxine died in 2009 at the age of 64, and "everything in me died,” Perry says. “If I didn’t have contracts and things lined up, 2009 would’ve probably been the end because there was nothing to keep making me want to get out of bed and move through it. I started drinking stupid heavily, and that lasted for a few years.”
Ortiz says Maxine proved the most difficult subject for Perry, “because that's his whole entire heart,” Ortiz says Perry cried after viewing the movie, explaining “I haven't heard my mother's voice in over 10 years.’”
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Perry’s dad’s heated appearance in the film
Perry discovered after his mom's death that Emmitt is not his biological father, which put him at ease. “I was relieved because my image of a father was not somebody who could do that to their child,” Perry says.
Ortiz traveled to Louisiana to seek his perspective. But when Ortiz arrived at his home with Johnson, Emmitt became incensed, shouting from his Cadillac Escalade at Johnson to leave the gated property.
“To see how he was in his old age, I can only imagine how he was when TP was a baby,” says Ortiz.
But Perry holds on to none of his father’s wrongdoing: “His whole practice is why should I hold on to something that is poisoning me and I need to release?” says Bekele. “I need to forgive for my own sake.”
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