Tyler Perry’s latest TV series, the TLC drama Too Close to Home, is his first project to feature a majority white cast. The decision has sparked criticism of Perry, particularly given the mogul’s dominance in shepherding entertainment that is both by and for black people. Perry dismissed the backlash, however, calling it “reverse racism.” “That’s totally reverse racism, because it was coming from African-American people,” Perry told the AP. “I don’t know if it was because they thought I should only be giving jobs to black people. Well, I think that’s ridiculous. If you look at the hundreds of black people I’ve given jobs to and even the ones I’ve made millionaires, people of color, I just think it’s unfair.”
If the whiteness of Too Close to Home is surprising given Perry’s past, he admits to shifting toward what the AP calls a more “color-blind” approach. “I’m just finding out more as I travel the country and world, the more I meet people, we’re all the same,” he said. “We all got the same dramas. So I’m not seeing color as much as I did anymore in the sense of our stories. Our stories are so similar.”
