LEVEL Q
Tyler Perry Is Ready to Defend Himself
The writer-director hears everything you say about him — and he’s got answers
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
Tyler Perry steps into a nondescript hotel suite near New York’s Columbus Circle, trailed by a septet of aides, assistants, and all the other support staff that comes along with being a studio mogul. Something weird is going on, and it’s not the unseasonably warm January afternoon outside.
Interviews like this tend to be a seminar in Advanced Waiting, long periods of looking over your questions punctuated by periodic text updates from some unseen wrangler as to why the person you’re there to talk to is nowhere to be found. But Perry, who has nearly as many hyphens in his job description as he does candles on his birthday cake — the writer-director-producer recently turned 50 — is a full 30 minutes early. So early, in fact, that no one’s briefed him on why he’s there.
His management runs down the list: First, a photographer from LEVEL will shoot some pictures, then he’ll sit down with a journalist. He’s clearly had a long day, but he sizes both of us up cooly: “Well…
