Filmmaker Tyler Perry is hitting back at “highbrow” critics of his movies.
“I know for a fact that what I’m doing is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing,” he said on Tuesday’s episode of the “Baby, This Is Keke Palmer” podcast.
“For everyone who is a critic, I have thousands of — used to be — emails from people saying: ‘This changed my life. Oh, my God, you know me. Oh, my God, you saw me. How did you know this about my life and my family?’ So that is what is important.”
Perry, who is often called one of Hollywood’s most successful Black directors, also said that “if you let somebody talk you out of a place that God has put you in, you are going to find yourself in hell.”
His comments came after podcast host Keke Palmer made reference to Michael R. Jackson’s “A Strange Loop,” a musical in which an aspiring Black playwright lambastes the filmmaker’s depictions of his characters. Perry said his fans deserve to have their stories told in his work.
“We’re talking [about] a large portion of my fans who are disenfranchised, who cannot get in the Volvo and go to therapy on the weekend,” Perry said. “So you’ve got this highbrow Negro who is all up in the air with his nose up looking at everything, and then you’ve got people like where I come from, and me, who are grinders, who really know what it’s like, whose mothers were caregivers for white kids, and were maids and housekeepers.”
He added: “Don’t discount these people and say that their stories don’t matter. Who are you to be able to say which Black story is important or should be told? Get out of here with that bullshit.”
Perry has previously addressed the backlash to his movies, including from fellow filmmaker Spike Lee.
On an episode of “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?” from 2022, Perry said he’d “heard it all” when it came to criticism of his work.
“There’s a certain part of our society, especially Black people in the culture, that they look down on certain things within the culture,” Perry said at the time.
“So when someone says, ‘You’re harkening back to a point of our life that we don’t want to talk about or we don’t want the world to see,’ you’re dismissing the stories of millions and millions of Black people.”
Watch Perry’s full interview on “Baby, This Is Keke Palmer” below.