Tyler Perry Interview, Daddy's Little Girls

MoviesOnline recently sat down with the multi-talented Tyler Perry to talk about his latest movie, Daddy’s Little Girls, which is the first feature film to come out of his new studio in Atlanta, Georgia. A romantic drama about family, community and love against the odds, Daddy’s Little Girls stars Gabrielle Union (Running with Scissors, Bad Boys II, Deliver Us From Eva) and Idris Elba (HBO’s The Wire, The Gospel, Sometimes in April). The film is writer/director Tyler Perry’s follow-up to his number one box office hits Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Madea’s Family Reunion and also stars Tasha Smith, Gary Sturgis, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Academy Award-winner Louis Gossett, Jr. The supporting cast includes Malinda Williams, Terri J. Vaughn, Cassi Davis, Juanita Jennings, and LaVan Davis. Daddy’s Little Girls is produced by Tyler Perry and Reuben Cannon.

A single father, Monty (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. But 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 (Union), a beautiful -- and hard-nosed -- attorney he meets during his short stint as a chauffeur. While Monty and the Ivy-League-educated Julia couldn’t be less alike, an unexpected romance blossoms…and it soon begins to feel like true love. But in order for their relationship to survive, the couple must reconcile their two very different worlds -- and overcome the forces that threaten to tear Monty’s family apart.

With Daddy’s Little Girls, his third feature and second outing as director, Tyler Perry delivers his most ambitious work to date. The film tackles the subject of fatherhood in black America via the story of Monty (Idris Elba), a garage mechanic fighting to regain custody of his three young daughters. A man of limited financial means but unshakeable integrity, Monty takes on his malicious ex-wife and her violent, drug dealer boyfriend in order to secure the best future for the children he loves. Infusing the film with his characteristic blend of high drama, antic comedy, deep spirituality and rousing songs, Perry creates a heartfelt homage to fathers -- and a welcome reminder that paternal commitment is alive and well in African-American communities.

Daddy’s Little Girls displays Perry signature affinity for mixing genres as its shifts between drama and comedy, romance and religion. It’s an approach that is rarely attempted in mainstream moviemaking, but one that Perry has finessed time and again, first in his phenomenally successful stage plays and then in Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Madea’s Family Reunion. Says Cannon, "Tyler breaks the rules. He’ll do a comedy/drama/romance and spiritual film all in one because that more closely resembles real life.”

Here’s what Tyler Perry had to tell us at the Los Angeles Press Day to promote his new film:

MoviesOnline: Congratulations on your new studio.

Tyler Perry: Thank you. Thank you. It’s been a little hell down there but it’s all good. We’re getting it together.

MoviesOnline: How did the studio come about? Was it something that you long wanted to do, build it in Atlanta?

Tyler Perry: Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to build one in Atlanta but what happened is I kind of fell into this studio that was already existing and did a bunch of renovations on it.

MoviesOnline: So what are your plans for it in terms of goals? What do you want to do with it?

Tyler Perry: Daddy’s Little Girls is the first film to come out of it. Right now, House of Payne, we have a hundred episodes to shoot for TBS and Fox so all of that will be shot there as well as the "Meet the Browns” sitcom will be shot there and my next two movies are in pre-production there as well. So it’s pretty busy in 75,000 square feet but we’ve occupied every corner of it so there’s no room to rent it or do anything else right now.

MoviesOnline: So are you going to expand then?

Tyler Perry: I think I’m going to have to, yeah. No sooner than we put the last nail in we realized we didn’t have enough space. We got people on top of each other down there but it’s great thing.

MoviesOnline: So it’s a proper lot in Atlanta?

Tyler Perry: Yeah, it’s on Crock Street at Edgewood. It used to be the old Stageworks facility.

MoviesOnline: So that whole street that they were on, that was a stage?

Tyler Perry: Yeah, that whole block there. It used to be a Soulworks Factory and they turned it into a stage about 15 years ago and I bought it over the summer.

MoviesOnline: So how did you create this project? How did it come to you?

Tyler Perry: I got a friend who I’ve watched. He used to work for me and I’d always get annoyed because every time I’d look up he’d be on the phone, like what woman is this guy talking to all the time? And then I found out he had three daughters and he talks to them all the time and he’s a great father. And then I have a friend who’s in my other ear saying she can’t find a man. She’s in corporate American and she can’t find a good man and so I thought what if this woman from the upper eastside met the hood and they got together and they were my muse for the story.

MoviesOnline: How did you cast the leads?

Tyler Perry: I was always thinking Gabrielle as I was writing it. With every line that I would write, I say ‘this is Gabrielle. This is Gabrielle. This is Gabrielle.’ It just came a little later when the two of them auditioned and were on tape together. I was like ‘That’s it.’ The chemistry was insane.

MoviesOnline: How did you know Gabrielle?

Tyler Perry: I didn’t know her. I didn’t know her at the time. We called her agent and went through the proper channels and got it all worked out.

MoviesOnline: But what was it about her that inspired you to cast her?

Tyler Perry: Just her work. I’ve seen her work in the past and I have to be honest with you, I don’t think she’s done better than she’s done in this movie in anything because her levels and her colors and her depth and the way she goes and how she paints it, she’s really great.

MoviesOnline: What’s your writing process like and how long did it take to write the script?

Tyler Perry: My writing process is in my head for months and months. Like I have about three scripts in my head right now and they’ve been in there for months. So I won’t sit down to write until they’re complete in my head and then when they’re complete, I can write it in a week because it flows like that. It’s that kind of stuff.

MoviesOnline: So it took a week to write Daddy’s Little Girls?

Tyler Perry: Daddy’s Little Girls, the first draft took about two weeks and then I went back and did another draft and it took about three weeks.

MoviesOnline: Do you do your own development? Do you give yourself notes or do you have other people, other producers who give you notes?

Tyler Perry: No, I absolutely do everything myself. I’ll send it to Reuben Cannon and have him read it and he’ll come back with his suggestions and ideas but for the most part it’s…

MoviesOnline: It’s really just you.

Tyler Perry: Yeah, yeah.

MoviesOnline: What were the challenges that you faced with this particular project?

Tyler Perry: What we thought would be the biggest challenge was the girls, but they were so perfect. Three sisters. Originally it was going to be one daughter but it ended up being three. They were just perfect. Their brother, their little brother is in the movie. He’s the one who says ‘Get away from my Daddy, tramp.’ That’s their brother so they’re all so talented. It was really, really easy. I haven’t been faced with a lot of challenges with this movie.

MoviesOnline: Are you looking for talent in Atlanta specifically?

Tyler Perry: You know I’m going to start an acting school there just to see what I can find there because I think that the level of gratitude out of Georgia is so much different than the level of gratitude here in L.A. so I would rather just work that end of the country.

MoviesOnline: Is it cheaper to work there?

Tyler Perry: Absolutely, absolutely. You can avoid a lot of the fat, if you will, that has to come along with Hollywood.

MoviesOnline: Did Gabrielle have a chance to talk to you about how her character in the movie is similar to what she’s going through in terms of the dating world. Were there a lot of similarities there that you could see?

Tyler Perry: Not that I know. We didn’t get a chance to get into it but I could tell the way she was playing it from, it wasn’t an actor pulling some sort of exercise out of the air. This was coming from real experience for her.

MoviesOnline: What did you think about their dynamic – Gabrielle and Idris?

Tyler Perry: If I had met them somewhere walking down the street, I would think they’d been married for four years and in love and those were their children because they were just that much of a family altogether.

MoviesOnline: So now that you have this studio and you have the ability to create African American stories, what do you think your responsibility is to portray creative stories?

Tyler Perry: At this point for me it’s about making sure that whatever stories we’re telling, there’s enough people doing enough negativity, there’s enough videos that show negativity, there’s enough of all of that, so what I want to do and what I want the Tyler Perry Studio vision, what I want it to represent is good positive images that we as African American people know we are but the rest of world doesn’t know we are because of all of the negativity.

MoviesOnline: Do you have plans to go back and play Madea again?

Tyler Perry: Absolutely. I won’t stop Madea because people won’t let me.

MoviesOnline: When will we see Madea on the screen again?

Tyler Perry: I’m doing two movies before that so it will probably be either late 2009 or 2010 but I’m not going to abandon it.

MoviesOnline: Do you miss not being able to play Madea?

Tyler Perry: Absolutely not. I don’t miss it

MoviesOnline: You’re not on tour like you were before. You’re used to playing that character and being in those shoes.

Tyler Perry: Yeah, I do miss the tour. I don’t miss the boobs, the dress, and the zipping up, and the hide and the fat suit and the make-up and shaving every day and the wig. That is a pain. I feel sorry for women all over the world but eventually I’ll get back to it.

MoviesOnline: Will you be touring again?

Tyler Perry: Yes. Absolutely. I’m looking forward to it. That I miss. I got a show on the road right now called What’s Done in the Dark that’s sold out and doing very, very well but I go and I miss it and I’m like a puppy [imitates sound of puppy whining], you know, because I want to get up there and do it too.

MoviesOnline: Where are all of Madea’s things right now?

Tyler Perry: In storage in Atlanta. Some of it’s in the lobby of our theater because we display some of it because people can’t believe how big she is.

MoviesOnline: You have a theater there too?

Tyler Perry: Yeah, there’s a 300-seat theater in the building.

MoviesOnline: So you’re not sneaking in there at 3AM and making sure…

Tyler Perry: Never happens. Never happens. Never happens.

MoviesOnline: So why did you choose not to be in this film?

Tyler Perry: I was tired for one. We had done 330 performances of Madea Goes to Jail and then between that did two movies – The Diary and The Family Reunion and the book coming out and the two sound tracks and trying to start the studio and get all of this stuff done. It was just overwhelming. So I wanted a vacation and my vacation was not having to be in front of the camera, not having to worry about working out. I got so fat on this thing, man. I’m just starting to come down but I put on like 40 pounds.

MoviesOnline: What do you do to relax?

Tyler Perry: I try to vacation two or three times a year. I've got a private island that I like to go to and really relax and then I'll go up to Tucson to a ranch up there and I'll write and relax there too. Relaxing for me is usually writing.

MoviesOnline: Did you really gain forty pounds or are you exaggerating?

Tyler Perry: No. I absolutely gained 40 pounds.

MoviesOnline: From what?

Tyler Perry: From not working out and I was eating whatever I wanted to eat, and there’s this thing called Krispy Kreme in Atlanta. I was like, 'I don't have to care about what I look like. I'm behind the camera.' But now that I'm getting ready to go in front of the camera next month the mad dash is on to take off 15 more pounds.

MoviesOnline: So what are you doing to lose that 15?

Tyler Perry: Working out every day.

MoviesOnline: : What’s your new project?

Tyler Perry: A film called 'Why Did I Get Married' based on the play. It's the film version of that, and then I'm doing a film called 'The Jazzman's Blues' which I wrote in '95 which is what? Thirteen years ago. That's about a jazz singer and a holocaust survivor and 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.

MoviesOnline: And so when are you going to be touring then?

Tyler Perry: After all of that. I have to get all of these out of the way and then I can think about touring again.

MoviesOnline: What drives you to do all of these projects?

Tyler Perry: Well, first of all feeling like everything that I'm doing matters especially at this point and doing things where I can leave people with something positive and hopeful. That drives me as well as never wanting to be homeless again. That scares the hell out of me, and more than that, there's the thought of having to go home to my parents and live with them. Even at this age that still drives me.

MoviesOnline: Really?

Tyler Perry: Yes, ma'am. I will sell ice cream on the corner before I have to do

that. So, yeah.

MoviesOnline: It was nice to see that you brought a lot of the history of Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue into this movie. I don’t think that people knew the significance of that area. What did that mean to you? You obviously were aware of that, but did you want it to be a character in the script?

Tyler Perry: Yeah, well it was important to me that we actually shot in that community. We shot the whole entire five or six blocks, whatever it is. But what was important to me is that I have so many young fans who don't know any of this stuff, who didn’t know who Cicely Tyson was and who may not know who Lou Gossett is, they don't know. A friend of mine was telling me about his children who are twelve and thirteen years old, they didn't know what an album was and so they were sitting there looking at it. You think about that and it's so foreign to us, and so I have such a broad audience that any time I get an opportunity to educate or explain who we are as a people and where we come from I feel like I have a responsibility to do that.

MoviesOnline: You had the Billie Holiday thing in the script in the movie. What music are you into personally?

Tyler Perry: Oh, man, I love big band jazz which is why I'm playing this jazz singer. I love that whole period, that whole time period. But I'm the kind of guy that can go from Nelly Furtado to Nelly and then to Bonnie Raitt to Jay Z. So it's all just whatever I'm feeling at the time.

MoviesOnline: What’s on your iPod?

Tyler Perry: It's schizophrenic. You name it. I've got show tunes. I've got Broadway show tunes on there because I write music for my plays as well as Ludacris and some 50 Cent. It’s just whatever mood I’m in.

MoviesOnline: Is that a part of your writing process?

Tyler Perry: Well, not necessarily the music, no. I have to have quiet when I write which is why I'm usually writing on the plane.

MoviesOnline: You’ve accomplished so much in the last three years. Is there anything else left to do that you really want to do?

Tyler Perry: I'm not a father yet. Well in the industry, there’s a lot of things, but being a father and a husband is probably something that is a fear for me, my greatest challenge. I want to see how I'll be at it. Maybe when I'm 40, I'll be ready. I'm 37 now.

MoviesOnline: What about in terms of the industry?

Tyler Perry: No, I don't think so. I think that I've been fortunate enough to do

everything that I've wanted to do so far.

MoviesOnline: You came to Hollywood and really did it on your own terms. How did you do that because most people have to kind of play by the game and stick to the rules? You kind of bucked tradition and did you own thing and were successful at it.

Tyler Perry: I think what has happened though is because I came with such a force of people with me. I didn't come here alone. These people carried me into this place. My folks. Little old mothers coming to theaters by the thousands in support. They came with me on their shoulders saying, 'Okay, this is ours so you're going to take care of him. And we're going to show you how we support.' So I can't take all the responsibility for it because had I not had that fan base that we built up from 30 people in my first show to 30,000 a week. It's all been amazing.

MoviesOnline: You ever have a moment where you just go, ‘Damn!’?

Tyler Perry: [Laughs] I prefer to go, 'Thank you, Jesus!' than to do the damn thing, but yeah, there are some moments where I go, 'Damn.' Do you mean a good damn?

MoviesOnline: Yeah, like a good damn.

Tyler Perry: Oh, yeah, yeah. A good damn for sure. I have those moments a lot.

MoviesOnline: What role does spirituality play in your life?

Tyler Perry: Every bit of it. It's so constant with me that it's not even a thought. It's like this is so important to me to pray and keep moving. I think that I pray now more than I did before.

MoviesOnline: I noticed Eddie Long in your film. Is he your pastor?

Tyler Perry: Sometimes. I don't have a specific place that I go every Sunday because it's hard now. It's not like it used to be, being able to just go and enjoy Sunday service. It's so hard to sit there and pray and try to have your moment with God and someone is going, 'Hey, can you sign this autograph for me?' 'Don't you see my praying now?’ ‘He can wait. Just sign this.’ (laughs)

MoviesOnline: Do you sing?

Tyler Perry: Yes. I sing a little bit. I sing a little bit. I sing enough to carry a tune.

MoviesOnline: Will you be doing your own vocals for the Jazzman’s Blues Film?

Tyler Perry: I will. I will, but after we finish doing all the mechanical stuff and touching it up and going to the studio and making it sound good it's going to be alright. It won't start from where I am though [Laughs]

MoviesOnline: Thank you.

Tyler Perry: Thank you so much.

"Daddy’s Little Girls” opens in theaters on February 14^th.