The first lawsuit against Tyler Perry accusing him of leveraging his power in Hollywood to sexually assault aspiring male actors in his orbit was filed in June. Another lawsuit was filed Dec. 26, with the entertainment mogul characterizing claims from both of the accusers as a shakedown. But his legal troubles may just be beginning.
“There’s now two of these lawsuits,” Jonathan Delshad, a lawyer for both Perry accusers, tells The Hollywood Reporter. “There may be more coming.”
In a statement, Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Perry, denied the allegations. “I said it before and I will say it again,” he said. “This is nothing but a $77 million money grab scam.”
For years, Perry has been viewed as a Hollywood success story. He runs Tyler Perry Studios, a 330-acre lot on a former Confederate army base that employs more than 500 people. It’s been championed as a crowning achievement for Black creativity and ownership in the entertainment industry, though there have been indirect criticisms within some corners of Hollywood, including by Donald Glover’s Atlanta and Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks.
Some of the references in those shows mirrored allegations advanced by Derek Dixon, who said Perry groped him while alluding to the filmmaker engaging in a pattern of exploiting male actors in his productions. For years, Perry has “been using his power and influence to molest, abuse, and sexually assault impressionable and vulnerable employees and actors who look to him for guidance and mentorship while pursuing their dreams,” Dixon, an actor on Perry’s The Oval, alleged. That was followed by the filing of a second lawsuit, this time by Mario Rodriguez, an actor who appeared in Boo! A Madea Halloween and accused the mogul of multiple instances of assault across several years at his Los Angeles home.
In the wake of the complaint, friendly communications between Perry and Rodriguez after the alleged assaults have surfaced. The messages show the two communicating as recently as August, with Rodriguez asking the mogul for help amid financial distress. “Feel sick most days. Never told anybody this but my mom and everybody is starting to notice my broke ass,” he wrote in the Aug. 31 note, per messages that TMZ and Page Six published. “Don’t have insurance.”
In another alleged text sent last year, Rodriguez thanked Perry “for everything” the mogul had done for him. “I just wanna tell you that your boy right here appreciates you more than anything,” he wrote. Perry responded, “You don’t have to give me a thing or pay me a thing. I’m just glad you’re good.”
The Associated Press reported that the communications show that they “remained in contact years after Rodriguez alleges their interactions ended.” And The Los Angeles Times, pointing to claims from Rodriguez that he cut off contact with Perry in 2019, wrote that the messages “seem to show otherwise.” But Delshad views the messages as showing a lopsided power dynamic in which Perry felt compelled to pay back Rodriguez for the alleged assaults.
“Why is he holding himself out as available for favors?” Delshad says. “That’s the larger context to this. This isn’t normal behavior from a billionaire producer toward an inconsequential actor who had a tiny role in one of his movies.”
According to the complaint, Rodriguez agreed to meet Perry multiple times across several years, even after he claimed to have been assaulted. The actor was given money on some occasions, including after an alleged assault in which Perry tried to unbuckle the actor’s pants, the lawsuit said. In total, Perry, unprompted, gave Rodriguez $10,000, per the complaint.
“They may say that Tyler Perry is just a philanthropic guy and that he does this for everyone and, maybe he does, but it seems unlikely,” Delshad says. “I would imagine his phone would be blowing up from hundreds of thousands of actors who played small roles in his movies.”
He adds, “Why did Mario feel comfortable enough to ask him for money and why did [Perry] respond four years after they made a movie together?”
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