Throughout the making of “The Six Triple Eight,” which centers on a Black women’s U.S. Army battalion that served during World War II, Tyler Perry kept getting signs from the universe. “Not only was I supposed to do this, but I had to honor [the story] in such a way that everyone knew how incredibly special it was,” he says, speaking by phone from his studio in Atlanta.
One such sign arrived when Perry was rehearsing a scene with Kerry Washington, who plays the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion’s commanding officer, Major Charity Adams. (The actor was also an executive producer on the film.) A location manager for the shoot brought Perry an extraordinary auction find: Adams’ military trunk, containing her actual uniform and handwritten notes.
“I felt like all of these women and all of these signs were pointing to: We are with you, and we want this story told,” Perry remembers thinking.
The multihyphenate behind Tyler Perry Studios is a famously busy man. When we speak, he’s in the middle of making final edits on “Straw,” an upcoming Netflix feature starring Taraji P. Henson. He also has “five or six” other movies in the can, plus “three or four” TV shows he’s actively producing.
“The Six Triple Eight” (out in select theaters Dec. 6) is the third movie he wrote and directed to be released this year, following the thrillers “Mea Culpa” and “Tyler Perry’s Divorce in the Black.” The evening after we speak, he’s set to appear at the premiere of his latest Netflix series, “Beauty in Black.”
“People think that I don’t sleep, or that I’m working 24 hours a day or seven days a week,” Perry says. “But the truth is that I’ll work three months very hard and then take two months off, then work three months very hard, then take two more months off.”
Arguably, he’s still most famous for portraying opinionated grandmother Madea across dozens of films and plays, most of which he wrote and directed himself. But since the start of his career, which began onstage, he’s shifted back and forth between comedy and drama, building his empire along the way.
“I want to do a historical drama, and I want to do a sci-fi movie, and I want to do big, broad comedy with Madea; and then I want to drop into a movie about zombies,” he says.
He was surprised when producer Nicole Avant approached him with the idea of making a movie about the 6888th, based on an article Kevin Hymel wrote for WWII History Magazine.
Initially, Perry thought Avant hadn’t seen “A Jazzman’s Blues,” his 2022 Netflix film about a doomed romance between a Black singer and a woman passing as white in the Jim Crow South. But Avant, the former U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas and the wife of Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, had seen an early cut of the period piece and was impressed by its beauty.
“Not only was I supposed to do this, but I had to honor [the story] in such a way that everyone knew how incredibly special it was.”
The project represented a pivotal moment for Perry. “It was the first time that I really enjoyed filmmaking,” he says. “I always approached filmmaking from the point of view [that it was] a necessity to tell the story. ‘Jazzman’ was my first time really leaning into the art and the love of filmmaking. It opened up a new portal in my soul.”
But Avant’s admiration of “A Jazzman’s Blues” wasn’t the only reason she believed that Perry was right for “The Six Triple Eight.” It also had to do with their shared sense of purpose as Black creators who want to tell the stories of their ancestors.
“Tyler and I live with this belief that we have a responsibility,” the producer says. “We’re very aware that we are the promise of everyone who’s come before us and sacrificed for us, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And our job is to make sure that their stories and their lives are never forgotten and always celebrated.”
Which leads to another element of the pitch that surprised Perry: He had never heard of the 6888th before. “I was quite embarrassed to not know that bit of history—that there were 855 women of color [who served] in World War II,” he says. “The very thought of that immediately piqued my interest. But it also [made me] pretty frustrated that these women’s stories had been ignored for all of these years.”
When the filmmaker began his research (after seeing a sizzle reel made by producers Keri Selig and Peter Guber), he went straight to the source. Within days of learning about the project, he flew to Las Vegas to meet with Lena Derriecott King, one of the last surviving members of the 6888th. King, who died in January, was 99 years old when Perry met her. She arrived wearing a full face of makeup, ready to tell her story. She said that her decision to enlist was spurred by the death of her friend, a Jewish man named Abram David, on his first combat mission for the U.S. Army Air Forces.
“She got really emotional, saying to me that he had died within a few weeks of being in the war. And to see her emotion after 70-plus years, I thought, Wow,” Perry remembers.
That story became the backbone of “The Six Triple Eight.” Onscreen, King is portrayed by Ebony Obsidian, who also stars on Perry’s BET series “Sistas.” In early scenes, she’s wooed by Abram (Gregg Sulkin), who promises to write to her from the front lines. After learning of his death, she’s inspired to join up. (Was their relationship romantic in real life? King initially told Perry it wasn’t; but when pressed, she said, “Well, kind of; maybe.” He adds, “This woman had so much class and dignity—I don’t think she was the type to kiss and tell.”)
Even though Adams was an expert commander, the Black contingent of the Women’s Army Corps remained stateside while its white counterparts were sent to Europe. That finally changed thanks to the encouragement of renowned civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune (played by Oprah Winfrey, a personal friend of Perry’s) and Eleanor Roosevelt (Susan Sarandon). Once overseas, the battalion was given a seemingly impossible assignment: to sort through pounds of mail to and from soldiers and their loved ones—some soaked in blood, some partially eaten by vermin—that had been sitting unsent for months.
The location of Perry’s studio gave him a unique filming advantage. The complex is situated on the grounds of Fort McPherson, a former U.S. Army base located outside of Atlanta. It bears a resemblance to Georgia’s Fort Oglethorpe, where the women of the 6888th began their military careers. This meant that there was no need to build sets to create an authentic feel.
“There are about 70 historic buildings on the historic registry that we keep in pristine condition,” Perry says. “You can walk in and bring the cameras and start to shoot, and you’re back in 1942.”
“People think that I don’t sleep, or that I’m working 24 hours a day or seven days a week. But the truth is that I’ll work three months very hard and then take two months off, then work three months very hard, then take two more months off.”
Production eventually moved to England, where the director shot one of the film’s most crucial scenes: the 6888th arriving in the U.K. and marching to their post. The sequence is based on actual footage that plays at the end of the film. Perry recruited the legendary, Emmy-winning choreographer Debbie Allen to work with his actors and extras to ensure that their movements were historically accurate.
“I loved his precision on everything,” Avant says, recalling the day when Perry called her from London while the cast was rehearsing the scene. “He doesn’t leave anything to chance. I always call him Quincy Number 2, because he reminds me of my godfather, Quincy Jones; [he was] the exact same: precision, precision, precision.”
As an actor himself, both in his own projects and in films by directors including David Fincher and Adam McKay, Perry is attuned to the needs of his performers. Washington, who first collaborated with him on 2010’s “For Colored Girls” and has remained his friend ever since, says that Perry has a gift for identifying and fostering talent.
“One thing I really appreciate about Tyler is that he knew [‘The Six Triple Eight’] was an opportunity for me to challenge myself in a new way,” Washington says. “And he promised me that he would hold me accountable for a performance that was different than anything I’d ever done before.”
“The Six Triple Eight” Credit: Bob Mahoney / Perry Well Films 2 / Courtesy of Netflix
For the Emmy winner, part of that challenge was finding her interpretation of how Adams would speak—and how she would make her voice sound distinct from her other
memorable roles.
“I don’t know that [Perry] ever said it in these words,” she explains, “but he basically was like, ‘I know what Olivia Pope [on ‘Scandal’] sounds like; I know your body of work. I know that if you do this, we have to make sure that Charity Adams is a standalone character and that she doesn’t make people think about other people, but makes people fall in line with her and her legacy and the legacy of all these extraordinary women in the 6888th.”
Perry’s commitment to supporting his actors also stems from his own work in front of the camera. He mentions an experience he had while filming Rob Cohen’s 2012 crime thriller “Alex Cross,” the day he arrived on set to shoot a scene in which his character’s wife dies.
“It took me hours to prepare to get into this heavy, deep place, and the director did not have an understanding of the wherewithal it took to get there,” Perry remembers. “He wanted to shoot everything else except the close-up, so by the time we got to the close-up, I was dry. I had nothing to give.”
While a lot of directors like to begin by shooting the wide shots in a scene before working their way toward the tighter ones, Perry does the opposite; he wants his performers to have the opportunity to deliver their best when they’re fully in the moment.
This strategy paid off during production on “The Six Triple Eight,” particularly in key moments when emotions were running high. For example, after Washington filmed a scene in which Adams stands up to a racist general (Dean Norris), Perry heard crying coming from another room. It was one of the film’s military consultants. “She was wailing because it was so real to her,” he recalls.
That said, since there isn’t much opportunity for downtime on set, Perry prides himself on working efficiently. “I don’t have a morale issue or an issue of keeping the energy up, because it’s all moving very quickly.” He acknowledges that this fast pace can be a shock for people who have been in the industry for a long time. (Washington told him that she planned to apply some of the streamlining skills she learned from him to her own directing work.)
“If the waste in Hollywood could be cut out, I think a lot of the companies that are struggling right now would be doing a lot better,” Perry says.
He also had another priority in mind as he was maintaining the pace of production on “The Six Triple Eight”: making sure that King would be able to see it. Knowing that her health was failing, he rushed to get a rough cut together so he could share it with her.
“She cried and laughed and saluted the screen,” Perry remembers. “And when it was over, she was in tears. I have this on film, where she’s saying to me, ‘Thank you for letting the world know that Black women contributed to the war effort. Thank you so much for letting the world know.’ ”
Avant, too, believes that Perry has “delivered something for the world.”
The filmmaker says that the timing of the release is serendipitous. “There’s this conscious effort and movement to ban books, to ban certain parts of history, to ban things that certain Americans deem unnecessary for younger Americans to know. This is not just a story about Black women; this is a story about American history.”
Ultimately, Perry sees “The Six Triple Eight” as more than a film. “Where I would place it right now is right in the middle of this bonfire that’s trying to destroy and burn away history. I want it to be a pillar of stone that can’t be burned.”
This story originally appeared in the Nov. 14 issue of Backstage Magazine.
Photographed by Shayan Asgharnia on 10.19 at the Four Seasons in L.A. Cover designed by Andrew Turnbull.
