Even for a big guy, the costume is a heavy burden.
And Tyler Perry, 6-foot-5, is a big guy. He's even bigger when he puts on his 20-pound Madea costume -- and another pound or two of platinum wig.
The outfit is crucial to the persona that helped build an empire. Tyler Perry makes two movies a year, stages numerous theatrical plays and has produced more than 200 episodes of one of his television shows, "House of Payne." Then there's his 30-acre, multimillion-dollar studio complex in Southwest Atlanta, which he opened in 2008.
Perry, producer/writer/director and lead actor, has many reasons to be thankful to Madea. But that fat suit is heavy. And even heavier when it's wet.
It was humid inside the Madea costume during the filming of Perry's latest movie, "Madea's Big Happy Family," which opens Friday. "In the Georgia weather? Are you kidding? I was sweating," he said recently.
Perry spoke earlier this month while waiting in a brand-new house in the Arnco neighborhood, near Newnan. Last Christmas the house on this lot burned to the ground, stranding Rosa Ransby, 88, her son, and seven great-grandchildren. Perry saw the incident on the news and paid to have the house rebuilt.
It was a form of therapy, Perry said, a way to deal with the death of his mother the Christmas before. "I was thinking of her, and I couldn't do anything for her, so I did something for these folks," he said.
Willie Maxine Perry was 64 when she died of cancer and diabetes in December 2009. Perry began writing the theatrical version of “Madea’s Big Happy Family” immediately afterward, as a way to cope. Perry has said his mother was an inspiration behind the tough-loving, strange-talking Madea, and that this story, in particular, was inspired by her spirit.
The film concerns Madea's niece, Shirley (played by Loretta Devine) who tries to bring her distracted family together to give them some bad news about her health.
In his quadruple-threat mode, Perry directed the movie while acting the lead role, and Devine said "in this movie you will see more of [Perry] in Madea than in any other show."
While directing some scenes that featured the hot-headed grandmom, Perry continued to wear the Madea suit, which Devine found very amusing. But even with the dress on, "he was straight-up Tyler," she said, and did not utilize any of Madea's strange diction. No "thank yer," no "afternoont."
Devine points out, however, that some of the things that happen off the screen in Tyler Perry movies are just as nutty as those that make it into the theater.
Calling from her mobile phone while driving through Hollywood, Devine was in the midst of an interview with the AJC, discussing her role in the movie when she rolled into a Madea moment that could have been scripted by Perry himself.
She interrupted the interview as three police cars passed her at high speed, then three more. Eventually 11 emergency vehicles roared past her on Beverly Boulevard.
Pulling to a stop at a police blockade, Devine turned her car around, then narrated what she saw next: "They've got a man," she said. "Is he naked?” she asked. “Oh my god, he’s absolutely naked!” On cue, four teenage girls approached from the opposite direction. “Go back!” Devine called to them, “Go back!”
Cut. Print.
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