Tyler Perry wasn't always the billionaire filmmaker and entertainer that we've known him to become.
The Divorce in the Black director reflected on his early start in a carousel Instagram post made on Monday (Aug. 5). In the post, the 54-year-old chronicled visiting the apartment that he was evicted from in Atlanta during the 1990s.
Perry began the post by recalling that it was ten years ago that he was notified that the apartment building was being torn down. Upon hearing the news, he paid his former apartment a visit, although the building is "still up."
"This was my first apartment after being homeless," he wrote. "I was so happy to have this place. I remember being so happy to have a roof over my head but also being so anxious and scared that I wasn't going to be able to pay the $425 rent every month."
Perry added that he'd "lay so still" on his twin-sized bed when overhearing his landlord collect rent from neighbors. "He would knock on the door and I'd just freeze and pray that he went away," he wrote. "I was late on the rent every month, man this makes me tear up."
It was also around the time that Perry was "depressed" while working to get his stage plays "off the ground" and having a job at UPS collections. "I was praying and praying for my change to come," he wrote.
"But here's the part that I want you to catch, I had started doing the play and started to make a little money and as soon as I got the money I paid all the back rent."
Although Perry was "happy" to make payments on his apartment, on one weekend, he was met with an eviction notice on his door after already paying his landlord.
"I was so mad," he wrote. "He said I was late too many times and I had been there too long and it was time for me to go."
But Perry took the eviction as a lesson that he needed to leave the place he
"found comfort" in.
Over a picture of himself standing next to his old apartment door, Perry wrote, "8 in biblical terms means a new beginning."
"I now know that I was at my new beginning. I now know that if he had let me stay there I would have never left, because I had gotten comfortable."
He concluded by writing that it's "easy to see the blessing in" his journey, "but going through it feels like you're at the end."
"But I choose to believe that you are at a new beginning. Don't be afraid!"
Perry's path from homelessness to self-made billionaire status has been a vital part of his career. Last March, he shared that he occasionally drives in the Geo Metro that he used as shelter when homeless. Atlanta is also where Tyler Perry Studios is located, having opened its 330-acre set in 2019. Perry's period of homelessness–and studio opening–was also tackled in his Amazon Prime documentary, Maxine's Baby.