His hilarious take-no-prisoners Madea character rarely, if ever, apologizes for her onscreen antics. Meanwhile, don’t blame Tyler Perry if a certain scene in the new “Boo! A Madea Halloween” unintentionally scares the you-know-what out some moviegoers.
With “Boo!” opening in theaters this weekend, Atlanta film titan Perry has been making the promotional rounds. As he was setting up a clip on ABC’s “The View” on Thursday, he realized it was the scene in which Madea is confronted by a menacing clown inside a darkened attic.
"I just want to say I have nothing to do with these clown sightings around America," Perry insisted as Whoopi Goldberg and the other "View" co-hosts began laughing. "The movie was shot long before those idiots started doing that."
By "idiots," he clearly meant the nationwide trend — real or imagined — of people dressing up as scary-looking clowns for the express purpose of scaring others. In metro Atlanta, as this map shows, "creepy clown" sightings have occurred from Dunwoody to Peachtree City.
MORE: Tyler Perry teams up with "The Walking Dead"
Creepy Clown hysteria appears to have started in North Carolina in August, then quickly spread with the help of social media. That's long after Perry – the writer/actor/director behind such earlier big screen hits as "Madea's Family Reunion," "Madea Goes to Jail" and "A Madea Christmas" – pulled on the Ornery One's wig and dress again to shoot "Boo!" in Atlanta last winter. A story by the AJC's ace Buzz reporter, Jennifer Brett, from early February included a photo of the clown character that Perry had posted online.
Who knew then that the character would unwittingly become part of a scary trend many months later? But not to worry, Madea’s on the case. No real spoilers here, but from what we could glean from that short clip on Thursday, creepy clowns don’t stand a chance around her!
