NAACP Image Award-winning actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter Tyler Perry jokingly admitted using his Madea voice during intimacy.
He revealed the weird “confession” during a lie detector test he took for Vanity Fair, which went live on Mar. 4.
“Do you ever accidentally use Madea’s voice in conversation?” an interviewer on the set initially asked him.
“Never, no,” he responded while hilariously looking over at the polygraph expert to his right. She looked up at him in silence. He then continued giving his drawn-out answer.
“Sometimes. Once, on occasion. Okay, during sex,” Perry said before mimicking a moan using his character’s signature greeting, “Like, Hellurrrrr-er-er.”
Then, he randomly began singing his own rendition of Adele’s 2015 hit song “Hello.”
Shortly after, the Vanity Fair interviewer asked the 52-year-old if he thought Madea would be honest if she took a lie detector test.
“No…she has too much to hide,” he told her. “She’s wanted; she has warrants.”
“Can you answer that as Madea?” she requested.
“I will not be answering no damn live [detector], ’cause I will not be detecting no lies,” Perry said in her voice “[You not finna] strap me up to none of this stuff, [I] been strapped up all my life. I had some tequila [and] woke up strapped up to a mule in Mexico one day and didn’t even know my name. They called me ‘Arriba,’ so no, you cannot strap me up to this thang.”
Earlier in the interview, the New Orleans native also revealed that legendary comedian and actor Eddie Murphy inspired him to create his uber-popular Madea character. Murphy has been well-known for playing several characters in a single film, like in the hit 1996 movie Nutty Professor II–The Klumps. In the film, he portrayed Professor Sherman Klump and his feisty female relatives, Mama Anna Klump and Grandma Ida Jenson, among other characters.
“I don’t talk about Eddie,” Perry said to the Vanity Fair interviewer after she asked him about Nutty Professor II–The Klumps. “He’s the GOAT, the greatest of all time. Why are we talking about Eddie?”
“That was the reason you decided you could play Madea,” she responded.
“Exactly right, yes,” he confirmed.
According to reports, Perry said he would be retiring Madea after 11 films, but the star director brought her back for his latest Netflix movie, A Madea Homecoming (2022). She first appeared in the 1999 play. I Can Do Bad All by Myself, which was adapted into a film starring Taraji P. Henson in 2009. However, Madea made her first movie debut in the 2005 massive hit movie, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, starring Kimberly Elise.
Perry has reportedly directed more than 20 films throughout his career thus far.
