Justin Simien wants to set the record straight about his past criticism of Tyler Perry as well as the Madea creator’s threat to beat him up.
Perry, 54, recalled the interaction with Simien, 41, during an episode of the Baby, This is Keke Palmer podcast uploaded last week.
“I called that n***a and told him I was gonna beat his ass,” Perry said with a laugh at the 42:12 mark in the video below. “When I think about somebody like him or somebody who has something to say, I’m like ‘Great, you have your opinion.’ I live from this seat, tempered, measured, patient, prayerful, and disciplined.”
He continued, “So when I saw that, I was sad for him because I think he’s really, really talented..."
The Dear White People creator shared a new TikTok video on Tuesday wanting to reconcile with Perry, believing he might be the “highbrow negro” archetype Perry criticized on Keke Palmer’s podcast.
Simien reflected on the broader challenges of being a Black creator in Hollywood, saying, “Whenever I would take my weird script to studios or financiers, they were like, ‘This isn’t like Tyler Perry, we don’t know how to sell this.’ And I took that to mean that Tyler and I were at odds and I was railing against what I perceived to be the status quo.”
He said he regretted his earlier criticism of Perry, particularly in a scene of Dear White People where the characters in the film denounce the types of films he makes over the stereotypes they portray about Black people.
“I was an outsider then and I was falling for the ‘okey doke,'” Simien said of the phone call he had with Perry in 2017 before acknowledging his significant achievements, including being the first Black man to own a major film studio.
“Once I was inside the ring I realized if you're a person of color, if you're a marginalized person making work about your own experience, the most sort of loud and egregious negative commentary that you're probably going to get is going to come from your own community,” said Simien.
“I was going around the road and suddenly like Dear White People which itself was trying to rail against the system. Suddenly people were telling me to my face, I was not black enough, I was not gay enough, my movie was not radical enough, and I was like, ‘Oh no, this is what I did to Ty. This is what I did to Tyler,’” he confessed.
Simien claims that Perry did in fact ask “Am I gonna have to come over and beat your ass?” but says he was also able to apologize for “tearing you down for a system that you actually did not create,” and emphasized Perry’s trailblazing accomplishments.
“It takes a lot of stress and a lot of energy to maintain that level of defense against, you know, all of these people,” Simien said further into the TikTok. “And I just want Tyler Perry to know he does not have to do that with me, for whatever it's worth—and it may not be worth much to him, but it is nothing but love from me to you, brother. And that's all I have to really say about it.”