Tyler Perry To Get COVID-19 Vaccine On TV To Settle Doubt In Black Community, Asks Churches ‘What Good Are You?’

Tyler Perry To Get COVID-19 Vaccine On TV To Settle Doubt In Black Community, Asks Churches ‘What Good Are You?’

It’s no secret blacks are succumbing to COVID-19 more than their white counterparts, and Tyler Perry is out to help spread information and encourage the black community to take the vaccine.

He told Gayle King of CBS This Morning,

“If you look at our history in this country, the Tuskegee experiment, Henrietta Lacks, and things like that, it raises flags for us as African-American people. So I understand why there’s a healthy skepticism about the vaccine.”

Tyler Perry will be getting the vaccine on television via a BET special Thursday, Jan. 28th. He said that he’s at ease now after expressing concerns with his doctors, a conversation that will also be featured on the special.

“I wanted to understand the technology of it. We talked about everything from the Spanish Flu of 1918 to what is happening now to where it came from, but I think my top question was understanding mRNA technology.”

In a separate interview with The Grio, he channeled his iconic Madea character and said,

“I’m getting that vaseline.”

Local Atlanta hospitals, Grady and Emory, asked Tyler Perry to get the vaccine in an effort to promote participation among blacks.

Tyler Perry said:

“Here is the alternative, you can take your chances with COVID-19 and unfortunately you don’t know how it is going to affect you. There are some people who are asymptomatic and are fine and there are other people who get it and die.”

Tyler Perry

He went on to call out the church and said more could have been done to fight the virus in the community.

“I have been so extremely disappointed with the church. It is almost heartbreaking … it is heartbreaking on so many levels… looking at the church and what it means to be a church to be there for the people. It means having the doors open. It means feeding the people. It means getting COVID testing. It means getting the vaccine done at the church.”

“Being the church means all of those things. And if a church is not stepping up to meeting those needs, then what good are you? To stand in the pulpit and just preach about God and Jesus and he is going to make a way when you have the opportunity and you have the ability to help somebody and you don’t. What good are you?”

Tyler Perry

He clarified that he’s not referring to churches who have done their part, adding:

“I have been really really disappointed in them not stepping up and meet the need. ‘Cause that is what the heart and backbone of [what] the church is.”

COVID-19 Vaccine and the Black community, A Tyler Perry Special. It airs Thursday at 9/8c.

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