Tyler Perry has had one hell of a year. On June 13—Friday The 13th—the film and TV mogul was hit with a $260 million lawsuit by actor Derek Dixon, who appeared on Perry shows The Oval and Ruthless. Dixon claims Perry created “a coercive, sexually exploitative dynamic” that led to, among other things, sexual harassment, battery, and assault. The Hollywood Reporter followed the news with a deep dive into the various lawsuits and complaints lodged against Tyler Perry Studios, mostly involving unfair labor practices.
All of this came after the release of his new film Straw, which has been Netflix’s most streamed, English-language movie for several weeks. The hella harrowing drama stars Taraji P. Henson as a single mother who goes through one truly bad day: She loses her job, her apartment, and even her sick little girl, who gets taken away by Child Protective Services. This emotionally fried heroine ends up accidentally robbing a bank (don’t ask) and reluctantly holding a bank manager (morning-show vet Sherri Shepherd) and others hostage when a detective (Teyana Taylor) and other law enforcers start showing up outside.
In typical Perry fashion, Straw puts its protagonist and audience through the emotional wringer. It comes with a shockingly sad, climactic plot twist that’s already led to TikTokers posting jaw-dropped reactions from their friends and parents. Heart-pulverizing films like Straw have made Perry the billionaire that he is today. Twenty years ago, the then-gospel playwright adapted his hit play Diary Of A Mad Black Woman (he wrote the script, but music-video director Darren Grant helmed it) for the big screen, introducing film audiences to Perry’s most prized creation: the gun-wielding auntie Madea.
With the $5 million film grossing $50 million, Perry would go on to adapt—and eventually direct—more low-budget, highly profitable film versions of his plays, building up a loyal following that’s predominantly Black and female. By 2019, the man had built his own studios in Atlanta, where he writes, produces and directs most of the movies and TV shows that come out of it. (It’s also been rented out to Marvel Studios for several of its films, including Black Panther, and series like The Walking Dead.)
But these money moves and investments come from a single source: Perry has built his Black-owned empire off of being a one-man dispenser of Black pain. His non-Madea films mostly consist of Black characters (primarily Black women) engaging in extreme drama that verges on cruelty. A woman is a bit on the plump side? Let’s have her continually tormented by her philandering husband! A woman is having an affair? Let’s give her HIV! A woman is just trying to take care of her two kids? Let’s have Michael Ealy kill them both!
Being the hardcore Christian that he is, Perry usually caters to his church-going fans by punishing characters who stray away from God and good, heavenly values. However, as Straw proves, Perry is always ready to send any Black woman (and the audience) straight to the breaking point.
Critics, from film scribes to TikTokers, have long voiced their displeasure at Perry’s constant need to create African-American agony on film and TV. “In Perry’s world, pain isn’t just a narrative device, it’s the entire plot,” wrote Nigerian film reporter Brooks Eti-Inyene. “Characters don’t grow through struggle; they exist solely within it. Women are cheated on, beaten, ridiculed. Men are either saviors or sociopaths. Redemption comes only after the world has chewed you up and spat you out.” Media commentator The PrideBrarian put it more bluntly: “Tyler Perry builds his stories around these stereotypes, and he has humiliated us to build his empire.”
A.V. Club-contributing critic Jourdain Searles hasn’t seen Straw, and probably never will—she gave up on Perry when she saw Acrimony, a 2018 film that also starred Henson. “I used to watch all of his films for a really long time,” Searles tells The A.V. Club. “I like to know my enemies, so I would just watch everything. But, at some point, I started to get really exhausted and kind of offended by the fact that he refuses to do better work or take better considerations.”
Now that Tyler Perry has been mostly dropping projects on streaming platforms, the look of these films is becoming just as poorly executed as the storytelling. Perry famously boasted that he got his Roger Corman on and shot his first Netflix movie, 2020’s excruciating A Fall From Grace (another film where a Black woman goes through hell), in five days. For someone who has two decades in the Hollywood game, you would think that Perry would have evolved as a filmmaker—or, at least, brought in other Black artists to make better content. But, unlike his contemporary Black Hollywood multihyphenates like Jordan Peele, Issa Rae, and Donald Glover (who lampooned Perry and his studio in an Atlanta episode, which Glover later admitted Perry had advance knowledge of), Tyler Perry isn’t one to spread the wealth.
As his infamous “WORK ETHIC!!” post showed us, Perry writes, produces, and directs every joint at Tyler Perry Studios (the sole exception is Peeples), where it’s always quantity over quality. “He has no respect for cinema. He has no respect for the form. He has no respect for the writers. He definitely doesn’t respect Black women,” Searles says. “I don’t know who he respects aside from, I guess, himself.”
Jay Jacksonrao, who co-hosts the Black On Black Cinema podcast, has also given up on Perry flicks. On a recent episode, he and co-host Micah Payne said they passed on reviewing Straw in favor of reviewing Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, which features an amazing performance from Marianne Jean-Baptiste as a struggling Black Londoner. Jacksonrao thinks that if Perry really wants a proper entertainment empire, he should use all that self-centeredness to get more Black people involved behind the scenes. “Let’s weaponize that arrogance, man,” Jacksonrao tells The A.V. Club. “Use that power and do awesome shit. Jordan Peele just got on the scene with directing movies, and he’s doing what you should have been doing for the last 10 years. Like, come on, man. That’s what I wanna see from him.”
As for the harassment allegations, Jacksonrao believes that whatever happens, Perry will still have his faithful fanbase. “People who love him and love his work are generally a pretty religious group of folks,” he says. Searles believes Perry is too well-connected to take a mighty fall. “I hope he has to pay up, but I don’t really think that it’s going to happen,” she says. “Because he’s got a lot of protection.”
Searles points to a meandering, three-and-a-half-minute speech on racial erasure Perry gave at the 2025 BET Awards. Along with being a major content producer for BET and its BET+ streaming service (Tyler Perry’s Divorced Stories is currently the streamer’s most-watched series), Perry has taken it upon himself to serve as a network spokesman. “I was just like, why did he just get on stage and talk incoherently,” she says. “Then I checked [online] and I saw that he’s one of the partial owners of BET+. All their money is tied up with him.”
Chances are even if Perry does have to endure a lengthy, money-siphoning trial, he’ll probably still make millions during that time by churning out films and TV shows that pander to God-fearing, toxic drama-craving Black audiences. His popular brand of melodramatic mediocrity is practically the reason why Tubi is flooded with dozens of low-budget, low-quality straight-to-streamers made by and starring African Americans—movies that are even more awful than Perry’s oeuvre. (You can go viral just by posting a clip from African American Psycho: The Hip Hop Freak, a movie that’s an American Psycho ripoff based on the current Diddy scandal.) Since Perry has proven that Black people can make bad but successful films just like white people, it was only a matter of time until low-rent filmmakers like Jonathan Milton or Jamal Hill began following his lead. These prolific creators are cranking them out just like Perry, who’s helmed 14 films since 2017. In that same time, Jordan Peele has directed three features. Steve McQueen has directed three, and an anthology series. Ava DuVernay has directed two.
If Perry wants to keep making so many movies about Black women, he should take a backseat and simply finance some rising female filmmakers of color. That’s what Searles would like to see. “He’s in Atlanta, and I’m from Georgia,” she says. “And there’s all this Southern work being done. Why hasn’t he worked with Channing Godfrey Peoples? Why not bring her into the fold? Miss Juneteenth was a big deal. Tayarisha Poe, that’s another young Black filmmaker that has been making really lovely work. It’s like he’s not aware of any of this. All he’s really interested in is profiting off Black actresses.”
As long as Perry stays stubbornly stuck in his creative ways, ignoring and overlooking the fresh new talent that could teach him a thing or two, his legacy will be just as vapid and troubled as his movies. Says Searles, “He doesn’t have any interest in fostering a new talent, because he hasn’t honed his own talent.”
