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Lakewood Times

Lakewood Times

Lakewood Times

    Tyler Perry is Retiring the Madea Character

    Tyler Perry is Retiring the Madea Character

    Tyler Perry says that he is retiring Madea, the feisty, foul-mouthed grandma who launched his career and made him million of dollars.

    Tyler Perry has played Mabel Earlene “Madea” Simmons for nearly 20 years. He is putting away his gray wig, glasses and long floral dresses for good. “I’m happy to kill that old b***h, I’m tired, man. I just don’t want to be her age, playing her,” says Tyler Perry according to CBS News. Tyler Perry is forty-nine and Madea is in her sixties.

    Fans of Madea will have plenty of time to say goodbye. Tyler Perry said he is taking Madea on a farewell stage tour, and he says he’ll use 2019’s Family Funeral movie to end her storyline. It is not made clear if the funeral is for Madea herself.

    There are eleven Madea movies and ten Madea plays. The first Madea appearance was in 1999 in the play, I Can Do Bad All By Myself. Tyler Perry didn’t make his first movie with the Madea character until 2005 in the movie, The Diary of a Mad Black Woman.

    Perry has said before that Madea is partly based on his own mother. In 2009, he told 60 Minutes correspondent Byron Pitts, “Madea is a cross between my mother and my aunt. She’s the type of grandmother that was on every corner when I was growing up. She smoked. She walked out of the house with her curlers and her muumuu and she watched everybody’s kids. She didn’t take no crap. She’s a strong figure where I come from. In my part of the African-American community. And I say that because I’m sure that there are some other parts of the African-American community that may be looking at me now going, ‘Who does he think he’s speaking of?’ But, for me, this woman was very, very visible.”

    There are many people very sad seeing Madea leave. Maddie Pedley, a senior at LHS, states, ” Oh my gosh, I’ve watched every movie of hers and I love them all. I’m going to miss her.”

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