*When Tyler Perry celebrated his 46th birthday on September 13, 2015, he made a surprising Facebook confession. “I really don’t like people singing “Happy Birthday” to me,” he wrote.
The movie mogul went on to explain that the physical and sexual abuse he suffered as a child is part of the reason behind his admission.
As noted by scribol.com, in 2009 Perry penned an open letter to his fans in which he described one terrifying incident where his drunk and angry father attacked him.
The star wrote: “[My dad] got the vacuum cleaner extension cord and trapped me in a room and beat me until the skin was coming off my back.”
Many fans may not know that his parents, Willie Maxine Perry and Emmitt Perry Sr., originally named him after his father. But Perry dumped the first name Emmitt just as soon as he legally could.
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Perry also claimed in his open letter that Emmitt had consistently abused him – mentally and physically – until the age of 19. His mother once tried to take her kids and leave the abusive household for good – only for Emmitt to have the family arrested for stealing his car. And when he later picked them up from jail, he reportedly abused his wife the entire journey home, according to the report.
Perry further revealed that he had been sexually abused by a friend’s father, and he later discovered that Emmitt had sexually assaulted another of his pals. Even Tyler’s grandmother had mistreated him.
Mr. Perry eventually leaned on his faith for strength and it helped him cope through thoughts of suicide. He even credited his mother for partly inspiring his most famous recurring character, Madea.
And when Perry later discovered that Emmitt was not his biological father, the filmmaker apparently didn’t harbor any ill feelings towards his mother.
“I love my mother to death, but she lied to me,” he frankly told an interviewer in 2014.
So, it seems that his mother is behind the reason why Perry doesn’t like people singing “Happy Birthday” to him.
As he related in his 2015 Facebook post, “Every morning that I can remember until I was 41, I woke up to the voice of my mother singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me.”
When Willie Maxine passed away in 2009, he wrote: “How I miss her voice, off key and all.”
He further explained why he doesn’t like to hear folks sing “Happy Birthday.”
“Sure, saying it is fine, but the song… well, hearing it sung by one person makes me sad. I don’t mind a group singing it so much, but one singular voice haunts me.”
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