Nationwide — Rumors say that there’s bad blood between media mogul Oprah Winfrey and filmmaker/ TV director Tyler Perry. An article from the The Daily Mail has reported that Oprah is supposedly frustrated by Perry’s lack of ability to take criticism. The publication claims that she is ready to end their business relationship, despite the fact that his shows bring big ratings to her network.According to an unnamed source, “When Tyler first brought his shows to OWN in 2012, it was a love affair between the two of them. Oprah was very involved in watching Tyler develop them creatively, and they even shot promos together with her as Miss Sophia from The Color Purple and he as Madea. But that relationship has soured in the last six months because Oprah finds Tyler difficult to work with and he doesn’t take constructive criticism well at all.”
This source also claims that things took a term for the worse when Oprah did some focus group research, and suggested that Tyler hire new writers for his shows, particularly The Have and Have Nots. “That’s when Oprah finally got to see a side of Tyler she hadn’t experienced yet,” the source says. “He resisted her feedback, the same way he resists the feedback of critics and media people who chastise his work, and became extremely defensive with her. He told her, ‘Aren’t the shows delivering ratings for the network? Well, then let me do what I do and you can keep your focus group research to yourself.'”
But Tyler Perry denies the feud
“It’s completely false. Nothing is accurate in the article except for my and Oprah’s names,” Tyler says. And, on his Twitter account, he has also shared a group photo of him with Winfrey and their cast and crew in his studio with a caption saying: “This picture was taken last week as Oprah came down to celebrate with me and the cast and crew!”
He then retweeted a posting by Gayle King who also said the rumors are not true.
King said, via her tweet, “Just reading @Oprah & @TylerPerry are angry w/each other & not speaking. If that’s true (it “ain’t”) must have just happened 10 minutes ago.”
But wait, there’s more!
Tyler is reportedly still in contract to release all of his upcoming TV projects on Oprah’s OWN Network, and things are obviously still going very well because they recently celebrated their 800th episode of his shows on her network. So, it appears the two are still going strong and are not feuding after all.
“Hallelujah, praise da Lort,” as Madea would say!