Tyler Perry enjoys taking orders on Ninja Turtles set
NEW YORK — Tyler Perry is Hollywood’s ultimate DIY star. But just because he’s created and starred in the hugely successful run of Madea films doesn’t mean he won’t leave his wig at home if the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles come calling.
And that’s exactly what happened when the 46-year-old was offered the chance to play the franchise’s iconic mad scientist Baxter Stockman in this week’s sequel, Out of the Shadows.
In the film, the pizza-eating crimefighters Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Donatello have to go up against arch enemy Shredder and the fearsome Krang. Stockman crafts the purple ooze that turns two thugs (played by Stephen Farrelly and Gary Anthony Williams), into iconic mutants Bebop and Rocksteady.
Megan Fox returns to the series as the Turtles’ pal April O’Neil along with Will Arnett’s glory-hogging Vernon Fenwick. Stephen Amell also joins the action as the hockey-loving vigilante Casey Jones.
“What I love about working in this kind of environment is I get an opportunity to be a student,” Perry told a group of journalists at a recent press day before the film’s world premiere. “I’ve been doing my own thing for so long, I got a chance to put all that aside and go into someone else’s set, sit back, learn and pay attention.”
Perry’s rise to stardom is the stuff of legend. In the early ’90s, he bet his life savings to mount a musical, I Know I’ve Been Changed. After a few stops and starts, he found his footing when he created the tough-talking Madea character in I Can Do Bad All by Myself (1999). Since then, he’s played the elderly woman nine times on film, including this year’s Boo! A Madea Halloween, and become one of Hollywood’s most financially successful stars. In recent years, Perry has started to branch out into more mainstream pictures — he starred as the titular character in an adaptation of James Patterson’s hyper-violent Alex Cross and took a supporting role as Ben Affleck’s lawyer in Gone Girl.
He also helped release the Oscarnominated Precious with Oprah Winfrey.
But playing the villainous Stockman in Out of the Shadows was a “blast” that let him come up with a signature laugh that’s like no other.
“I was sitting there flirting with Megan’s character April and that laugh showed up and everybody’s like, ‘Keep the laugh, keep the laugh.’ I thought it was hysterical that (Baxter), thinks he has a chance with somebody like Megan, you know?”