Tyler Perry
Host

Tyler Perry – writer, producer, director, and actor extraordinaire – went from the poverty-stricken streets of New Orleans to a multimillion-dollar mansion outside Atlanta.  But the real story is that of his journey from homelessness to bliss.

Perry’s rags-to-riches tale is astonishing and inspirational.  His younger days were troubled, and he suffered from endless abuse growing up.  The dejection and rejection caused Perry to do some soul-searching as an adult.  In 1992, in an effort to find catharsis for his own childhood pain, and inspired by Oprah Winfrey to put it down on paper, he wrote a series of letters to himself.  Those letters would be transformed into his first hit musical, I Know I’ve Been Changed.  Perry’s humble spirit and his faith in God kept him focused.  He believed that God was calling him to share his story with as many people as possible so that he might help others.  Perry learned real forgiveness, deep down inside—a forgiveness that leads to success in the soul.  He chose the stage life as a vehicle, and this new life has been a learning process, full of hard work.  But now Perry has reached out to millions across the country and in doing so has tremendously altered how people perceive and attend urban theater.

In 2005, Tyler Perry took the nation by storm when the movie he wrote, produced, and starred in, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, opened #1 at the box office.  In its first week on sale, the DVD sold nearly 2.5 million copies.  At the same time, Perry was starring nightly across the country in a sold-out stage show he’d also written, produced and scored—Madea Goes to Jail—even as another one of his productions, Meet the Browns, was touring nationally.  Together, the two productions sold out more than 500 shows in theaters from coast to coast.  Every week in 2005, 35,000 people saw a Tyler Perry production. 

Since making his film debut with Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Tyler Perry has become a multimedia phenomenon with a roster of hugely successful film, stage, television, and book projects.  Perry's first two films both debuted at number one at the North American box office and the combined sales of his nine DVDs have sold over 11 million units.  Perry's first book, Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea's Uninhibited Commentaries on Life and Love debuted at #1 on the New York Times' hardcover nonfiction bestseller list and remained in the Top 10 for eight weeks. Most recently he finished production of his next film Daddy's Little Girls and created and produced 10 episodes of the first-run syndicated comedy series, House of Payne, which premiered in select markets earlier this year to excellent numbers.

Daddy’s Little Girls will be released in February 2007 by Lionsgate.  The first 100 episodes of House of Payne, Perry’s first-run syndicated comedy series will begin debuting nationally on TBS in the fall of 2007.