The first footage for “Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story” was filmed over a decade ago by co-directors Gelila Bekele and Armani Ortiz, who have followed Perry throughout his career over the past 10 years. Ortiz said that had he known Bekele was planning on working on the project for that long, he might have been a bit more hesitant to join. “But in all honesty, if we didn’t have that time, would you have been able to be as vulnerable as you were if we just did it in two years?” Ortiz asked Perry.
Perry sat down with Bekele and Ortiz to discuss their documentary at the Variety FYC Streaming Room presented by Prime Video. The film follows Perry’s life from his childhood beginnings to his current position in Hollywood as the ultimate multihyphenate creator, writer, studio head, producer, actor, and so much more. With a focus on healing, “Maxine’s Baby” shows Perry’s hard journey to the top in a difficult and often unwelcoming industry.
“The first time I saw it, I had to step away from it for a minute to gather my emotions and my feelings because it was so well done, so incredibly thought out and laid out with such exact precision of storytelling,” Perry said. Perry said he was initially resistant to participating in the film, even joking that he almost took the project away from Ortiz and Bekele and wanted to give it to somebody else. Ortiz said the hardest part of making the documentary was keeping up with Perry and finding his rhythm over the decad.
