The Undying Tyler Perry Story

From the Philadelphia Tribune:

Reportedly, Perry’s attorney, Matt Johnson, said that the four were fired because of poor work performance. Griffin, Moore, Brown-Jackson and Ferrell had worked on more than 100 episodes of Perry’s series, now syndicated on FOX. The three remaining writers were asked to stay on, and two did.

“Up to that point, we wrote 100 episodes of ‘House of Payne,’ said Ferrell, who was fired on his 3 year-old son’s birthday. “The show won three Image Awards last year — one, for the best comedy on television, and we just had a ‘table read’ in Atlanta with Tyler Perry and the actors. We got a standing ovation on the scripts we wrote, and his exact words were, ‘These are golden!’ This was just a week ago. So that was just totally ridiculous and absurd that it was because of our work.

“And logically, it doesn’t make sense. You wouldn’t hire people and let them write 100 episodes for you … TBS was so pleased with the show that they gave him another 26 episodes. So he brings us back to write the rest of the 126 episodes. We wrote 16 of them, and then all of a sudden he’s not pleased with our work? That just doesn’t make sense.”

...

“The day after he fired us, they called the Writer’s Guild and wanted to go union,” Ferrell disclosed. “He fired us Monday, and wanted to go union Tuesday morning. So basically, he’s just throwing it in our face(s) saying, ‘OK. You guys brought this to me — trying to make me go union. So I’m going to go union so I can avoid all the flack, but I’m going to fire you, so you won’t receive any of the benefits from it.’”

Yeah, Perry and his lawyer seem to be doing a piss-poor job of making this go away.