*Tyler Perry has 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.”
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.”
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WORK ETHIC!! Come on. Let’s go get 2020!!! pic.twitter.com/BzADIi1rAa
— Tyler Perry (@tylerperry) January 6, 2020
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.”
Adding: “We have four shows coming up with showrunners who will have their own writers and their own writers’ room. There will always be opportunities at Tyler Perry Studios for writers. Always. But for these particular shows, my audience wants my voice.”
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