BlueLivesMatterBY COWGIRL
Actor and producer Tyler Perry initially received criticism for creating opportunities for white actors and in his new show. Fox News reports, recently, Tyler Perry assembled an all-white starring cast for his new TLC drama series, Too Close To Home. The backlash immediately began, most of it on social media. Some called his choice an “all time low” for the man known for hiring mostly black actors.
Tyler Perry, age 47, in an interview with a news source from his Atlanta studio, referred to the criticism as “reverse racism, because it was coming from African-American people.” He called the criticism unfair and said that he thought it was ridiculous if people thought he should be giving jobs only to black people.
It seems as if Perry becomes more color-blind as time goes by. His years of traveling around the world and being a part of other cultures while building his ventures have helped him see things from an open lens. He also said in the interview “I’m just finding out more as I travel the country and world, the more I meet people, we’re all the same. We all got the same dramas.”
The new drama begins the second half of its first season on January 04, 2017 on TLC. A white actress from the starring cast, Danielle Savre, said that she was very aware of the criticism. She found it intimidating when the show first started, even though the non-starring cast was more diverse, but has since felt more at ease.
Perry said that he was unsure about the idea when it was first mentioned to him by the president of Discovery Communications but became more confident as the process moved forward. He is the writer, director, and producer for the show. As the show’s writer, he relates the story to how he grew up in a trailer park with other relatives in a small Louisiana town.
The story’s theme is about a young woman who flees Washington, D.C. after an affair with the President. The resulting political scandal and fallout sends the woman back to the only place she can truly find refuge: her modest beginnings in a trailer park in a fictional town named Happy, Alabama. The actor said that he knew “Happy, Alabama” very well in his mind. He also said that the stories that he’s telling in the show could involve anyone, black or white.
Thank you, Tyler Perry, for showing the world that we are alike, no matter what our skin color is. And that it’s okay to be color-blind.