This past week Tyler Perry visited Jimmy Kimmel on late-night TV and had fun talking about numerous topics including how he got back into shape, why he’s not dating, and how it has been a joy to do “real comedy” again.
They covered everything from Stevie Wonder’s pranks to the history of “Madea.” But what got Perry uncomfortable was talking about dating. When asked if he was dating, he very quickly replied, “No.” When Kimmel asked him why, he said, “I don’t like it.”
Perry went on to explain, “The rules are different now, man. Now you get Instagram and DMs and people send you stuff that say, ‘Hey, let’s have sex.’” This got some laughs, but then Perry added, “Well can I take you to dinner first? Can I learn your name?”
Discussing the rules of modern, and sometimes virtual, dating brought up Perry’s Instagram account, which recently has been quite the magnet due to his built physique, aka “thirst traps.” When Kimmel held up one of the most recent selfies that Perry took of himself post-workout, Perry explained to great laughter, “I was in the gym and I had an incident. … You’ve heard of a thirst trap, right? That’s called a thirstpiration. I inspire them at the same time.”
Perry said his new movie on Netflix, “Tyler Perry’s A Madea Homecoming,” was fun for him to do. Kimmel brought up that he said he wasn’t doing Madea anymore, and Perry explained, “Everyone’s afraid to do real comedy now because you get canceled for doing jokes. So, I just went for it in this movie.” He continued, “We need to laugh. I mean, you know it with what you bring to our living rooms every night, our bedrooms every night. It’s really important.”
Perry even went on to explain how important comedy is and how Rosa Parks saw him in a Madea performance onstage.
“I was telling a joke about Rosa Parks in ‘Diary of a Mad Black Woman,’ and Rosa Parks actually saw it and loved it, right? She loved this joke. This joke is about the reason that she didn’t get off the bus is because Madea was waitin’ at the bus stop to beat her up for stealin’ her man. So, I actually put it in the movie this time. But to think that Rosa loved it and it gave her joy, that made me feel good.”
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