Thursday, March 28, 2024

Keke Palmer Claps Back After Catching Heat for Showing Love to Tyler Perry

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*Keke Palmer had to get some fans right together after they came at her sideways for showing love to Tyler Perry

“I want to be like Tyler Perry when I grow up,” she wrote on Twitter on Monday. “He’s like a modern Walt Disney.”

And with that single tweet, several KeKe fans lit up the comment section of her post to criticize Perry for not having a writer’s room. 

We previously… Perry responded to criticism that he doesn’t have a writers room, as he writes all of his scripts on his own.

In an interview with men’s magazine Level, the movie mogul recalls the challenges he faced hiring Black writers early in his career and how this led to his “NO WRITERS ROOM” motto. 

“So, when I first started my career, I got a deal with TBS. When it was time to staff, I went to DGA, SAG, and IATSE and I told them, “TBS isn’t paying me the money upfront — I’m financing these shows myself. I’m not Sony, I’m not Disney; I need to work out a deal for pay rates,” Perry tells the publication. “They worked out great deals for me. At the time, I had a bunch of writers who were nonunion, and I was unhappy with every single script they wrote. They were not speaking to the voice. They just didn’t get it.”

READ MORE: Keke Palmer on Why She ‘Expected’ Her Talk Show to Be Canceled: ‘It’s a Different Time Now’ [WATCH]


Perry hired a Black, female lawyer to get WGA writers on his 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.”

But when word reached the media, Perry was made to look like an enemy of emerging writers. 

“I’m getting calls that I fired writers for trying to unionize. What? I came to the WGA on my own to try to work with them! I fired the writers because they weren’t giving me what I wanted. Period. It was a mess. The press says I fired writers who were trying to unionize. Not true, and it pissed me off,” Perry explains.

“Later on, my mom got sick. So I put a writers’ room in place for one of my shows. 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. And if I still don’t like it, I have to pay them again for another rewrite,” he says “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.”

Perry adds, “Look, one year, we overpaid the WGA by a million dollars.” 

When the interviewer asks, “So no more writers’ room?” 

Perry responds, “After dealing with all that bullsh*t? No. I ain’t doing it.” 

Tyler Perry
(Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Palmer defended Perry this week after fans noted their disapproval of his writers room policy.

“I love Tyler Perry. Period. He has inspired me so hate on him if y’all want but he’s done incredible things and literally came from NOTHING. His movies triple what they were made for and he HAS HIS OWN LOT,” she said.

“This social media trend of trying to literally criticize everyone to the bone is not fun nor cute. People aren’t perfect, you’re never gonna like ALL of everything. NEVER,” she continued.

“You don’t have to throw out the baby with the bath water. You can like some things about someone and dislike others, it’s possible for someone to be flawed and still be beloved,” she added. “And in pure Virgo fashion. I don’t care if you disagree because you don’t exist.”

Palmer also has love Perry because he offered to pay for treatment for her skin issues that negatively impacted her self-esteem, MadameNoire reported. 

“I’ve struggled with this for years and I still do and it’s acne. I’ve battled it and documented it on social media,” she said last year. “I remember it got so — whew chile! [laughs] I remember it got so bad when I was around 13 or 14, I was at the NAACP Awards and just a year before, I did Madea’s Family Reunion with Tyler Perry. We saw him at the awards and you could tell I was pretty insecure about it. It was obvious to see. He actually pulled my mom to the side and said, ‘I’m actually going to pay for you guys to take her to a dermatologist.’ It really made a difference in my life.”

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