50 Fascinating Facts About Madea Creator Tyler Perry

38. When he was cast as Gen. Colin Powell in Adam McKay‘s Vice, Perry called the former secretary of state to get his blessing. Apparently they clicked. “He sent me his book, I sent him mine, he texts me now and then,” Perry told Variety in 2019. (Powell died in 2021.)

39. “He’s got skills,” McKay told Variety about Perry, describing how well he played a heavily improvised scene with Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld. “There’s no question we’ll be seeing him in many more dramatic roles, if he wants.” McKay also recruited Perry to play a morning show host who’s laughing off the end of the world in his Oscar-nominated 2021 satire Don’t Look Up. 

40. Not everyone’s an admirer. Perry is also a 17-time Razzie nominee (or 20 if you count being nominated at the same time for two different roles on three occasions) and a two-time “winner” for worst actress, for A Madea Christmas and Boo 2! A Madea Halloween. He was, however, in the running for the Redeemer Award—a kiss-and-make-up nod for past nominees who prove themselves as respectable artists—in 2019 for Vice. After which he was slapped with four more nominations in 2020 for various offenses in A Madea Family Funeral.