Loni Love has some tough love for Tyler Perry after the dismal critical response to his latest film, Tyler Perry’s Divorce in the Black.

Perry’s Divorce in the Black stars Meagan Good and Cory Hardrict in what could have been serendipitous stunt casting since both Good and Hardrict are at the center of two pieces of salacious relationship gossip. The two play people in a broken relationship, with Hardrict’s character Dallas seeking a divorce while Good’s character Ava tries fighting for the marriage before ultimately switching to fight for her independence. The story could have made for a great plot, but critics gave the film a whopping 0 percent rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with many calling it Perry’s worst film yet.

Even though the audience did give it a solid 71 percent fresh rating, Bossip reports that Love took to X Monday writing her opinions on what Perry could do to appease critics and those audience members who didn’t like the film.

“I love that Tyler is paying Black actors now,” she wrote. “I wish he would hire Black writers and directors that have experience to help him with his movies…He could improve the movies & make them award worthy if he would stop trying to save money by doing the writing and directing himself.”

I love that Tyler is paying Black actors now I wish he would hire Black writers and directors that have experience to help him with his movies… He could improve the movies & make them award worthy if he would stop trying to save money by doing the writing and directing himself. https://t.co/HExhpNMAqe
— Loni Love (@LoniLove) July 15, 2024

This flies in the face of Perry’s 2020 tweet in which he showed off his mountain of scripts and shouted “Work ethic” to the camera, leaving him open to viewers lambasting him for praising quantity over quality.

Love also isn’t the first celebrity to call Perry out for failing his audience and critics. Lil Rel Howery commented on Perry’s work in 2020, telling Deadline, “I love Tyler Perry and I’m proud of him…but I told myself I’m going to say something because I don’t agree with that. You can’t write a show called Sistas and you’re not a sista…[Y]ou don’t want no suggestions or nothing?”

“…We gotta do better man. It’s all talk, but if you’re really on that, then give people jobs, bro. You can’t base nothjing on one writer’s room, brother,” he said, referencing Perry’s prior comments to not hiring a writers’ room because they wouldn’t know how to talk to his audience. “That means you didn’t hire good writers. Find more writers.”

And, of course, years before Howery’s comments, Spike Lee took Perry to task in 2009 for creating stereotypical characters and storylines. They later made up, as Perry would comment on to Variety in 2020.

Still, it has become a regular occurrence that social media will find fault with Perry’s writing and directing, and unfortunately, he makes it easy for them. In 2021, Perry was criticized for a viral scene in Sistas involving a conversation about a character liking his “prostate tickled.”

At the time, he wrote, “Out of all the things happening in the world, you’re worried about a character on this show saying he liked getting his prostate tickled? OK, listen. To all of you who think I need a writers’ room, let me just say this: We do have writers’ rooms on some of my other shows, and there will be other writers’ rooms to come.”

However, he continued, Sistas is written solely by him.

“In the past, I had writers’ rooms, and the ratings tanked. People know my voice. They know how I write. And have you ever thought for a minute, just one second, that I’m specific in what I’m doing?” he said. “That I’m telling the stories that the audience wants to see? Don’t worry about it. I got this. That’s why the show is number one.”

Tyler Perry's Divorce in the Black

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