Tyler Perry reflects on tearful tale of a teacher’s harrowing actions
Tyler Perry, a renowned actor, playwright, and filmmaker, recently shared a heartbreaking childhood memory that involved his teacher and beloved pet hamster.
While speaking at the Paley Honors Fall Gala on Wednesday, December 4, at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, Perry talked about his “childhood trauma.”
In his speech, the actor and director shared a story about a time when his science teacher killed his pet hamster.
Expanding on this, the 55-year-old star of Beauty in Black revealed that his middle school teacher, whose name he did not mention, “hated” him.
He quipped, “I didn’t know why he hated me, but I was sitting in the room, and I was really leaning in and paying attention. He was like, ‘Why are you looking at me that like that? You don’t intimidate me.’”
Perry went on to call to mind a time when he was talking about his pet hamster with classmates when that educator said to him, “No, Black kids don’t have a hamster. You don’t have a hamster,” and then asked him to bring the hamster to school.
“So I brought the hamster to school, and all the kids were fawning over how cute he was. Buddy was his name,” the executive producer of The Oval added.
The turning point came when his science teacher ordered him to dissect the animal, and he asked, “Will he live?” because he was bewildered as a kid.
However, as soon as he threw a question, the teacher quickly replied with a one-word answer, “No.”
And due to the constant pressure his classmates were putting on him, Perry eventually gave in by handing over his pet to the teacher.
“I tried to go to the back of the room, and he’s like, ‘No, no, no. Stay up here.’ So I watched him put his chloroform on Buddy and kill him in front of me,” Perry claimed, recalling the terrifying memory.
Moving forward, the Sista’s producer remarked he did not remember how his pet died until many years later.
Perry highlighted, “It was a memory that I didn’t even know was there until I was in this therapy session. I saw myself walking home with this empty cage and realizing that no one asked me what happened or why the cage was empty. Not one person in my life.”
Shedding light on another challenge he went through, the Star Trek actor articulated, “So I survived that and forgot all about it, growing up at a time where there was an AIDS pandemic. I would go to church every Sunday, and many of the men in my choir would be dead every Sunday.”
“Or being stopped and frisked and slammed to the ground, just because I was Black and big, and the police were corrupt. But I survived, and I’m here. So I think that’s enough to allow myself to be celebrated,” he added.
Finally, looking back at the traumatising past event, Perry concluded by confessing that people who hurt him “did not steal my compassion” or “rob me of my heart and my care for others,” even “they could not grip away my ability to heal.”