Tyler Perry Explains Putting His Name in Every Movie and TV Title He Creates
The TV and film mogul says "it's never been about ego."
— -- He has created "Tyler Perry's The Haves and the Have Nots," "Tyler Perry's For Better or Worse" and "Tyler Perry's Love Thy Neighbor" on TV. And even put "Tyler Perry's Diary of a Mad Black Woman," "Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?" and "Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys" in theaters.
So why does the TV and film mogul put his name on everything he creates?
"Very early on when I started doing these plays and live shows I would travel from city to city and there were a million shows out there ... so I wanted to step out among it and I started putting my name above the title," he told a room full of reporters today in New York City.
Perry said he struggled to keep his name on the marquee early on when producing stage plays and recalled one argument he had with a promoter before a show.
"We had this argument about it. He said, 'Who do you think you are?' But even then when nobody knew my name, I had an idea to build a brand," he said. "And if you're going to build a brand, they have to get what they expect from that brand.
"So it's never been about ego," Perry, 46, continued. "I want this brand to be identified with this kind of entertainment."
It makes sense that Perry would put his name on his productions, especially because his four TV shows, which all air on the OWN Network, are written solely by him, he noted.
"I don't have a writer's room. I write all the shows myself," he said. "Ninety-one episodes a season, I'm sitting there at the computer writing, and writing, and writing because I want the voice to be authentic so that the audience is hearing from me and not other writers.
"There are a lot of other shows on the air that are fantastic shows but they have writer's rooms. The people that we love, at most, only write one or two episodes a season," Perry added.
Perry also wanted to clarify recent headlines that claimed he "saved" Oprah Winfrey's cable network. The two have an intimate relationship beyond business. Winfrey is even the godmother to his 1-year-old son Aman with girlfriend Gelila Bekele.
"It's the power of Oprah that saved the network," he said. "It's the power of Oprah Winfrey that turned it around and it is the business sense of Oprah as a CEO to say, 'Come do this for my network.' Yes we have great ratings, but we're not saving the network."
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