After growing up with an abusive father, Tyler Perry doubted what type of father he would be, turning to God for guidance. The man behind the lucrative “Madea” film franchise said the answer he received in prayer was a lot simpler than he expected: Do it in reverse.
The accomplished billionaire shared his trepidation about parenting with Oprah Winfrey and her guest assembly during a recent installation of Oprah Daily’s “The Life You Want” class, which premiered on Feb. 21.
Perry and his ex, Ethiopian model and fellow filmmaker Gelila Bekele, welcomed their son, Aman Tyler Perry, in November 2014. The duo have chosen to keep the now-nine-year-old out of the spotlight and don’t share images of him online.
When a woman from the audience asked how he knew that he would be a good father to Aman, the Hollywood A-lister replied, “I didn’t. I struggled with that and I worried because I didn’t have an example, because this man was just awful, right?”
A pivotal move that helped Perry change his mind was sitting down and talking to his Lord.
“One day I was praying about it, looking in the mirror, and I’m like, ‘God, what do I do?’ And the answer came to me as clear as day: Do it in reverse,” he recalled.
Over the years, Perry has been very candid about his relationship with his father, even detailing in his 2023 documentary “Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story” how Emmitt Perry was a hard-working provider for his family, but also an abusive man who terrorized the 54-year-old as a child.
The relationship was so strained that Perry, who was originally named after his father and was called “Junior” throughout his childhood, legally changed his name to disassociate with anything connected to his menacing father.
His father gave a glimpse of how nasty he might have been during the billionaire’s childhood when he screamed at the crew that came to interview him for the Amazon Prime film. He also revealed that it wasn’t until he reached the age of 30 that he found out Emmit was not his biological father.
For Perry as a father and under the instruction of God, he opted to do the complete opposite of whatever he saw the man that raised him do.
“[I] reverse the image. Do the opposite of what that man did to be ‘an incredible father,’” he said, adding, “And that’s what I tried to do. I show my son love and encouragement, and I stand with him when he’s wrong. I straighten him up. I chastise him the right way so that he understands that the correction is done in love. Everything that man didn’t do.”
#MaxinesBaby was so insightful & interesting to watch! Tyler Perry is just a phenomenal being ❤️- wish much continued success to him! I didn’t realize he experienced such horrific abuse by his “dad” & he’s still taking care of him. He looks just like Ms. Maxine (rip) -same face💜
— Perfectly_Imperfect (@prfctlyimprfct4) November 19, 2023
While his parenting style is not something he inherited from his dad, there is something that he took from Emmitt Perry’s life that is of value: his work ethic.
Perry is notoriously known to be a hard worker, grinding out projects at a breakneck rate. He got that from his dad.
He told Winfrey, “[He] worked his ass off every day, sunup to sundown.”
“Made sure that the money was coming into the house, made sure all the bills were paid, everything that my mother wanted him to do financially was there as best he could,” Perry conceded, but not giving him anything more.
