Tyler Perry has managed to sculpt an empire around Madea (full name Mabel Earlene Simmons), the no-nonsense matriarch he first portrayed in the 1999 play "I Can Do Bad All By Myself." Madea has a ...

With his creation Mabel “Madea” Simmons, here starring in her seventh film, Tyler Perry has built a franchise around barking disciplinarian, commonsense solutions to societal ills — and being that ...

When ESSENCE.com caught up with Tyler Perry this week, he was in the middle of promoting his latest movie, Madea’s Witness Protection, wrapping up his next movie The Marriage Counselor (while fending ...

For 20 years, Tyler Perry’s Madea has delivered laughs, tough love and some valuable life lessons in between. Madea, short for Mabel Simmons, is the no-filter grandmother figure fans have grown to ...

For many, especially black people who see in her a mockery of our own grandmothers, Tyler Perry’s Madea is little more than a mammy — an insult to the matriarchal community figure that Perry claims to ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Eighteen years ago, Tyler Perry brought his DIY play to the big screen. Released in 2005, “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” chronicles ...