The advice comes following bad reviews for his latest film, 'Divorce in the Black,' which is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Loni Love is calling on Tyler Perry to hire Black writers.
After Screen Rant shared a report via X that Perry’s recent Amazon Prime Video film, Divorce in the Black, starring Meagan Good and Cory Hardrict, received a zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the comedian chimed in with some advice for the media mogul.
“I love that Tyler is paying Black actors now. I wish he would hire Black writers and directors who have [the] experience to help him with his movies,” wrote Love. “He could improve the movies & make them award-worthy if he would stop trying to save money by doing the writing and directing himself.”
In 2020, Perry revealed that he does not hire outside writers for any of his projects. At the time, he was promoting his Netflix film, A Fall From Grace, when the Madea creator opened up about his decision not to seek additional help on the scripts for his television shows and movies.
“So, I don’t know if you know this, but all television shows have a writers room,” said Perry in the clip where he showed off a pile of scripts. “Most of the time, there are 10 people or 12 or whatever that write on these television shows. Well, I have no writer’s room. Nobody writes any of my work. I write it all. Why am I telling you this? I wrote all of these scripts by myself in 2019. Work ethic!”
When he was met with backlash, Perry gave more insight into his decision to do all the writing independently. He recalled working with union and nonunion writers at the top of his career.
“At the time, I had a bunch of nonunion writers, and I was unhappy with every single script they wrote. They were not speaking to the voice. They just didn’t get it,” he said. “There was a Black woman lawyer I was negotiating with to get WGA [Writers Guild of America] writers on my show. I told her, ‘I can’t afford to pay those rates that every other studio pays. I need to structure differently.’ It looked like the deal was going to go through, so I fired the four writers and prepared to hire new writers through the WGA.”
He also cleared up rumors that the writers were fired due to their trying to unionize.
“Now we’re a WGA show, and I’m paying WGA rates. Scripts they’re turning in? Ratings are going down. So now I have to go in and give notes on how to rewrite them,” he explained. “And if I still don’t like it, I have to pay them again for another rewrite. At one point, I thought they were submitting scripts that would need rewrites in order to get paid multiple times. And these are Black people.”
Love isn’t the only person questioning Perry’s decision not to hire writers. Many people took to X to express their disappointment with his latest film.
“Literally 5 minutes into Tyler Perry’s movie Divorce In The Black, seeing them folks take the body out the coffin at a funeral in church… like who on earth thinks of that… every time I try to give Tyler Perry another chance… he Tyler Perry’s it every time,” wrote one person.
Someone else commented, “Divorce in the Black has so many plot holes. Why does Tyler Perry do this to every movie? Every movie has the same characters: a single father, a woman that has low self esteem and then finds her power in some way, a praying mother/grandmother. Someone get this man some writers!”
Despite the negative reviews for his latest project and the call for him to hire Black writers, Perry is still making major moves in the industry. On Tuesday (July 16), in a press release shared with BLACK ENTERPRISE, BET Media Group announced the debut of BET Tyler Perry FAST (free, ad-supported television) channels. Thanks to the new BET Tyler Perry Comedy and BET Tyler Perry Drama FAST channels, fans can now watch back-to-back episodes of BET original Tyler Perry series.
The move also follows an extension of Perry’s multi-year content partnership with BET Media Group, which will now take place through 2028, featuring hundreds of new episodes of current and new series from Perry to be shared for consumption on the network.
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