By Christina Radish
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Tyler Perry at the premiere of "Madea's Family Reunion" held at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, Calif. on February 21, 2006. |
The new romantic drama Daddy’s Little Girls, from writer/director/producer Tyler Perry, is about family, community and love against the odds. Single father, Monty (Idris Elba) is a garage mechanic who lives in an inner-city neighborhood and struggles to make ends meet as he raises his three young daughters on his own. When the courts award custody of his daughters to his corrupt, drug-dealing ex-wife Jennifer (Tasha Smith), Monty desperately tries to win them back, enlisting the help of Julia (Gabrielle Union), a beautiful and hard-nosed attorney he meets during his short stint as a chauffeur. While Monty and Julia couldn’t be less alike, an unexpected romance soon blossoms, and the couple unite to overcome the forces that threaten to tear Monty’s family apart.
With Daddy’s Little Girls, Perry creates a heartfelt homage to fathers that is a welcome reminder that paternal commitment is alive and well in African American communities. After making his feature debut as a writer, producer and actor in 2005's Diary of a Mad Black Woman, and it’s follow up Madea’s Family Reunion, Perry decided not to act in his third outing, which allowed him to delve deeply into his writing.
{quote_top}“This story evolved from a friend who used to work for me,” the 37-year-old Louisiana native tells MediaBlvd Magazine. “I was always getting annoyed because every time I would look up, he would be on the phone. I thought, ‘What woman is this guy talking to all the time?’ Then, I found out that he had three daughters that he talks to all the time, and he’s a great father. And, I had a friend who was in my other ear, saying that she’s in corporate America and can’t find a good man. So, I thought, ‘What if this woman from the Upper Eastside met the ‘hood, and they got together?’ They were my muse for the story.”
Once the story came together, it didn’t take Perry long at all to get it on paper. “My writing process is in my head for months and months. I have about three scripts in my head right now, and they’ve been in there for months. I won’t sit down to write them until they’re complete in my head, and then when they’re complete, I can write it in a week because it’s that constant. The first draft of Daddy’s Little Girls took about two weeks, and then I went back and did another draft that took about three weeks.”
{quote_middle}Working-class Monty is an unlikely romantic prospect for the Ivy League-educated Julia, and their relationship gets off to a rocky start because of it. But when things get heated up, Perry knew he’d have to cast two actors who had obvious chemistry. “I was always thinking of Gabrielle, as I was writing it. With every line that I would write, I was thinking, ‘This is Gabrielle.’ I’d seen her work in the past and thought she was really great. Idris came in a little later. When the two of them auditioned on tape together, I knew that was it. The chemistry was insane. If I had met them somewhere, walking down the street, I would have thought that they had been married for four years, and were in love, and that those were their children because they were just that much of a family.”
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Tyler Perry with his mother and aunt at the premiere of "Madea's Family Reunion" held at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, Calif. on February 21, 2006. |
With his romantic leads cast, Perry says he dreaded what he thought would be the biggest challenge of the entire shoot -- working with the three young girls that would play Monty’s daughters. “It was originally going to be one daughter, but it ended up being three. The three sisters we cast (Sierra, Lauryn and China McClain) were so perfect. Their little brother is also in the movie. They’re all so talented. It turned out that I didn’t have to face a lot of challenges with this movie.”
Having gone from the poverty-stricken streets of New Orleans to a multi-million dollar mansion outside Atlanta, Perry’s rags-to-riches tale is astonishing and inspirational. In 1992, in an effort to find catharsis for his own childhood pain, and inspired by Oprah Winfrey to put it down on paper, he wrote a series of letters to himself. Those letters were later transformed into his first musical, I Know I’ve Been Changed. Perry has since gone on to become a multi-media phenomenon with a roster of hugely successful film, stage, television and book projects. Now, he can also add studio owner to his list of accomplishments.
"I wanted to build a studio in Atlanta, but I fell into one that was already existing and did a bunch of renovations on it. Daddy’s Little Girls is the first film to come out of there. Right now, we have 100 episodes of our TV show, House of Payne, to shoot for TBS and Fox, and all of that will be shot there, as well as the Meet the Browns sitcom. And, my next two movies are in pre-production there, so it’s pretty busy. It’s 70,000 square feet, but we’ve occupied every corner of it, so there is no room to rent it or do anything else right now. I’m going to have to expand it. No sooner than we put the last nail in did we realize that we didn’t have enough space. People are on top of each other down there, but it’s great. Next, I’m going to start an acting school there and see what I can find. I think that the level of gratitude in Georgia is so much different than the level of gratitude in L.A. I would rather just work in that end of the country.”
With the studio in full swing, Perry feels a level of responsibility, in putting out films that tell positive African American stories. “There are enough people out there presenting negativity. There are enough videos showing negativity. I want the Tyler Perry Studios vision to represent good and positive energy that we as African American people know we have, but that the rest of the world doesn’t know we have because of all the negativity that’s out there.”
{quote_bottom}Perry’s next films include a film version of the play Why Did I Get Married?, along with A Jazz Man’s Blues, which he wrote in 1995. “That’s about a jazz singer and holocaust survivor. If I have my way, Ben Kingsley will be playing opposite me, and Diana Ross will be playing my mother. It’s an amazing, straight drama that we’re really excited about. I will be doing all of my own vocals for that.”
After those films are finished, Perry promises that he will return to Madea, the foul-mouthed, pistol-packing grandma that made him famous. “I won’t stop playing Madea because people won’t let me. It will probably be either late 2009 or 2010 before we will see Madea on the screen again, but I’m not going to abandon her. I’m looking forward to going on the road again too. I absolutely miss that. What I don’t miss is the boots, the dresses, the fat suit, the make-up, the wigs and the shaving every day. That is a pain. I feel sorry for women all over the world, but I will eventually get back to it.”
