The latest entry in the wildly popular Madea Universe, Tyler Perry’s Boo! A Madea Halloween, just opened in theaters on Friday, but Tyler Perry is already looking to the character’s future. On an episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, Perry explained that he’s been able to use the Madea character to “bring messages to people who no one has been able to get a message to,” so he’d like to use her to say something important about modern society—not that there isn’t something important about Madea’s Halloween-themed war against annoying young people. Specifically, he says he’s been “thinking about” telling some kind of Madea story that revolves around “police brutality, and all of these people being shot by police officers.” He believes that doing something like that with the established platform he has with the Madea character would “speak volumes to what so many people can’t say.”
Elsewhere in the chat, Perry explains who is audience is (“hardworking people, mostly African-American, largely women, who have all kinds of jobs”) and why he makes sure to put his name on all of his movies (for branding purposes, unsurprisingly). He also touches on his own history and how he came to play this tough-talking grandmother in so many movies