“When these women left home, there were rumors that they were sent to Europe as concubines for black soldiers” – The Irish Times

If you didn’t know that Tyler Perry, the prolific writer, director, actor and self-made billionaire, is a very busy man, the hustle and bustle around him would make that clear.

Perry’s accomplishments are as extensive as his workload. He has written around 20 stage plays, 17 television shows and two bestsellers. The state-of-the-art film and television production facility he founded in Atlanta, Georgia in 2019 has, in addition to staging his in-house TV shows and films, also hosted major Hollywood productions, including “Black Panther” and “Coming 2 America.” The impressive property includes realistic streets and a full-scale replica of the White House.

He also helped Prince Harry and Meghan Markle by letting them use his Beverly Hills home when they stepped back from royal duties in 2020. He is godfather to her daughter Lilibet.

For an artist who spent his $12,000 savings on staging and developing his first play at a community theater in the 1990s, that’s a huge step forward. He slept in his car while touring the Chitlin’ Circuit, a series of venues across the United States that have promoted black talent since the Depression.

He still can’t believe how things turned out. “Wouldn’t that be a great film?” he says. “If our older selves could go back in time and say, ‘You wouldn’t believe what’s going to happen for you.’ Just keep going. You are on the right path. It will blow your mind.’ How great would that be?”

Perry’s latest film, The Six Triple Eight – amazingly the 26th film he has written and directed since 2006 – is the remarkable true story of the U.S. Army’s only black women’s unit deployed to Europe during World War II. In 1945, its members were sent to sort through 17 million pieces of mail stacked in warehouses across the continent.

I’ve never heard of this battalion, I tell him. “Oh, me neither,” Perry says. “Nicole Avant” – Barack Obama’s ambassador to the Bahamas – “sent me this sizzle video, a one-minute clip of historical footage about these women and what they did.” I thought, “You’re kidding, right?” During World War II, there were There were 855 black women with dark skin in Europe, and I didn’t know it. I was embarrassed.”

While researching The Six Triple Eight, in which Kerry Washington plays the groundbreaking Major Charity Adams, the first black officer in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps – and the highest-ranking black female officer in the U.S. military during World War II – Perry stumbled upon a hidden story .

“It was an opportunity to honor these women because when they left home there was this stigma,” Perry says. “The stigma was so bad that most people didn’t even talk about it. Many of their families did not know they were in the service.

“There was a lot of stigma because there were rumors – even black newspapers had reported – that they were sent to Europe as concubines for black soldiers. Because white soldiers from America were angry about black soldiers dating European women. So they came home and didn’t talk about it. Charity Adams worked at Macy’s for a while.”

For a filmmaker best known for romantic comedies and the silly antics of his alter ego Madea, The Six Triple Eight was both a change of pace and a big responsibility. Perry recalls his exchanges with 99-year-old Lena Derricott King (played by Ebony Obsidian in the film), who came forward after her Jewish friend was killed in combat and around whom his film revolves.

“She talked about how much better they were treated in Europe than back home in the U.S.,” Perry says. “I didn’t know what her memory would be like. But her memory was so sharp. I went to the historian after taking notes and he confirmed that everything she said, every detail was spot on.

“I was honored to have made a rough cut and had the opportunity to sit at her bedside when she was in hospice at 100 years old. And she was still sharp. When I came in she said, “Give me some lipstick, Mr. Perry is here.” She was very excited about the film. Many of the women still alive knew my work. They really loved Madea.”

Madea is Perry’s most successful creation. The no-nonsense, funny matriarch, who Perry plays herself, appears in plays, films and television, discussing faith, occasionally escaping from the Ku Klux Klan and resorting to violence when abusive men appear. She has earned more than $1 billion worldwide.

Perry tried to send her into retirement with Madea’s Farewell Play in 2019, but it went nowhere. Madea’s Destination Wedding, the 13th film in the Madea film universe, will land on Netflix in 2025.

“It’s most effective for me when the world is in trouble,” Perry says. “She comes in and madness and chaos ensues. I want to have a moment to just make people laugh. I don’t mind as long as people can laugh, feel good and forget about the craziness of the world for a minute.”

As an occasional actor, Perry performed scenes with Cate Blanchett (“Don’t Look Up”) and Ben Affleck (“Gone Girl”) and played Colin Powell (“Vice”) and a New York Post editor (“Brain on Fire”). During the production of this final film, Co Kerry director Gerard Barrett noticed the similarities between Madea and Brendan O’Carroll’s Mrs Brown. Both are truthful, old-fashioned matriarchs, played by men in unflattering clothes. Mrs Brown then appeared in A Madea Homecoming, Perry’s 2022 crossover comedy.

“Gerard asked me if I had ever seen Mrs Brown’s Boys,” says Perry. “I looked it up and thought, ‘Wow, that’s fascinating.’ I watched what he had done in Australia and parts of Europe and thought, ‘I did that in America’… When we met and talked, it was as if we were old friends.”

( Ms. Brown and Madea: A Meeting of Culturally Denigrated PhenomenaOpens in new window )

Perry, who was born in New Orleans, endured extreme poverty and abuse as a child at the hands of an abusive father. “I don’t know why he did that,” he said. “But I remember him cornering me in a room and hitting me with this vacuum cleaner cord.”

Going to church with his mother, Willie Maxine Perry, and retreating into his imagination gave him much-needed respite. In 1992, he was inspired by Oprah Winfrey to write a series of letters to himself describing his traumatic childhood. The letters merged to form the hit musical I Know I’ve Been Changed.

It received a rave review in The Washington Post, a rarity for a creator who is not popular with critics. “I don’t mind,” Perry says. “It’s going very well. I think some of us are really uptight and always have our noses in the air. For me it’s about bringing joy to people.”

Perry did not graduate from high school. He transitioned from theater to cinema the same way he had done everything in his career: through on-the-job learning. The first Madea film, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, was directed by Darren Grant in 2005. Perry, who wrote, produced and starred in three roles, took notes.

“I like to do several things at the same time,” he says. “Since childhood, I had this hypervigilance to protect and protect myself. I think all of that has flowed into the work I do now. I didn’t direct my first film because I didn’t think I was ready, but when I watched the film the amount of time wasted drove me crazy. Because I wrote the checks.

“So the next film I directed, I learned on the fly, which was difficult because millions of people are judging and watching what you do. I’m so grateful to my audience because back then – and to this day – they send the things I do straight to number one.”

“The Six Triple Eight” is Perry’s second collaboration with Kerry Washington. His best roles are always female, a talent that has attracted artists like Whoopi Goldberg, Janet Jackson, Gabrielle Union, Kim Kardashian and Alfre Woodard, not to mention Winfrey.

“I owe it to my mother and my aunts,” Perry says. “I grew up on my mother’s apron hip. I watched her endure everything possible. And I heard her tribe: the women around her. I was like a sponge, listening to everything they said and watching how they moved.

“I love writing for women. Whenever I write for a woman, I think about what these women went through, what they went through and what their feelings were. My mother Maxine is part of every female character I write. I’m grateful that the women I work with understand. But even if something is wrong, they will challenge me. I’m very happy about that.”

“The Six Triple Eight” can be seen on Netflix from Friday, December 20th