Multi-hyphenate mogul Tyler Perry‘s life story is finally being told on the big screen.
Producer/director/actor Perry is the focus of Prime Video documentary “Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story,” which is billed as an intimate and revealing look at one of the most prolific entertainers of our time.
Co-directed by Gelila Bekele and Armani Ortiz, the film centers on Perry overcoming his childhood trauma in the midst of building an empire. “Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story,” a nod to his mother’s love, is a tender and intimate portrait of visionary and innovator Tyler Perry and his harrowing but faithful road to the top of an industry that didn’t always include him.
Nearly a decade in the making, with unfettered access, directors Gelila Bekele and Armani Ortiz lead us into the inner world of a man whose story has never fully been told as he becomes a father and a media mogul with a mission to pave his own road to the top. The product is a profound lesson on remembering where you came from to know where you want to go.
The film is produced by co-director Bekele with Jasmine K. White, and Asante White. “Maxine’s Baby” is set to make its world premiere at AFI Fest.
Perry currently has a four-picture film deal to write, direct, and produce movies for Amazon Studios. He recently helmed Netflix melodrama “A Jazzman’s Blues” which was decades in the making.
Perry addressed his at-times controversial legacy during “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?” in September 2022. “There’s a certain part of our society, especially Black people in the culture, that they look down on certain things within the culture. For me, I love the movies that I’ve done because they are the people that I grew up with that I represent,” Perry said. “Like, my mother would take me in the projects with her on the weekends. She’d play cards with these women. Most of them didn’t have a 12th-grade education, but their stories and how much they loved each other and how when they’d get sad about something another would come in and make a joke. I’m 5 years old on the floor with my Matchbox cards. I was in a masterclass for my life.”
He continued, “So when someone says, ‘You’re harkening back to a point of our life that we don’t want to talk about it or we don’t want the world to see,’ you’re dismissing the stories of millions and millions of Black people. That’s why I think it’s been so successful because it resonates with a lot of us who know these women in these experiences and Uncle Joe and so on and so forth. But what is important to me is that I’m honoring the people that came up and taught and made me who I am. Their stories deserve to be told too.”
“Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story” premieres November 17 on Prime Video. Check out the trailer below.
