Tyler Perry doc ‘Maxine’s Baby’ to stream on Prime Video beginning November 17
The life and career of the billionaire writer, actor, filmmaker, studio head and media tycoon Tyler Perry is getting the Amazon Studios documentary treatment in a film is co-directed bv Gelila Bekele and Armani Ortiz. Titled “Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story,” the film is described as “a nod to Perry’s mother’s love and a tender, intimate portrait of visionary and innovator Perry.” It will begin streaming over Prime Video on November 17.
Perry’s mother Willie Maxine Perry died in 2009.
A release announcing the doc notes, “Tyler Perry is America’s consummate multihyphenate. But underneath the entertainment behemoth is a man working humbly to heal his childhood trauma by transforming his pain into promise.” It goes on to describe that “Maxine’s Baby” will chronicle “his harrowing but faithful road to the top of an industry that didn’t always include him.” Nearly a decade in the making, the film finds Perry granting Bekele and Ortiz unfettered access and “lead us into the inner-world of a man, whose story has never fully been told, as he becomes a father and a media mogul with a mission to pave his own road to the top.”
Perry has spoken about his own struggles with depression and revealed he had attempted suicide several times before his career took off. Last December, following the suicide death of DJ, dancer and actor Stephen “tWitch” Boss, he posted a video to Instagram opening up about his own harrowing battles earlier in life while mourning Boss.
“I just want to take you back to a time in my life when I tried to commit suicide, a couple of times, because it was so dark I didn’t think it would get any better,” Perry said then. “I had endured so much pain, so much abuse, sexual abuse, it was all so hard to just move through that I thought the only way to make this better was to end my life. Had any of those attempts happened, I would’ve missed the best part of my life.”
Perry encouraged those struggling to reach out for help.
“I know it may seem like there’s no hope, but please reach out to someone. Call, ask for help if you are dealing with anything, anything that is emotionally taking you to a place where you think you want to end your life,” he said. Perry explained how he got through his own pain, stressing, “What I realize now, looking back on all those dark times is, sometimes the pain is a buy-in. I know that’s hard to understand. Not all the time — sometimes — the pain is a buy-in. That’s the way I had to learn to look at it to get through it. What I mean by that is, all that pain, all that hell, all that struggle, if I had given up, if I had stopped, I wouldn’t have seen the better part of my life. So, I was buying into something, I was paying for something.”
Bekele is the mother of Perry’s eight-year-old son Aman Perry. Besides directing the documentary, Bekele also produced “Maxine’s Baby” under her Bekele Films shingle with Jasmine K. White and Asante White.
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