Tyler Perry may be a billionaire, but he has made it clear that when it comes to family, he is not "welfare."
The media mogul spoke candidly about mixing finances with family in a conversation on the YouTube series "Den of Kings" with host Kirk Franklin and fellow guests Derrick Hayes and Jay "Jeezy" Jenkins, revealing that he once fired his aunt from a job for not taking it seriously.
"She said she wanted a job. She would always call asking for money, I would send her the money," Perry said. "I said, 'Listen, I want to help you. I want to help you build this thing, not be welfare to you. So let me give you a job.'"
However, once she had the job, she would not show up at work and was constantly calling off.
"Well, you gotta go," he recalled telling her. "Because you want me to hand you the money, but you don't want to work for it. See, that doesn't work for me."
He applied a similar attitude to his 10-year-old son, Aman, who does chores in exchange for things that he wants.
"I don't believe in giving us things that are just going to handicap us," he said. "That is the worst thing you can do."
Elsewhere in the interview, Perry shared that when his mother died in 2009, he told family members that she had asked him to only financially support family members for a short time — 60 days. After that, they were expected to find jobs and support themselves.
"I'm not going to keep supporting you like that," he recalled telling them.
In the end, all the family members found jobs.
"And it wasn't even, like, jobs where they made a lot of money, but it was a job," he said. "It was something else for them to do, feel some pride in. That's the same thing I would want someone to do for me."
According to Forbes, Perry has amassed a net worth of $1.4 billion, largely because he retains full ownership of all his creative work. His successful "Madea" franchise alone has brought in more than $660 million at the box office.
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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