USA: The multi-talented Tyler Perry directs "Daddy's Little Girls," a romantic drama about love and family in inner-city Atlanta

Tyler Perry, the multi-talented director, writer, and actor who burst onto the scene with 2005's "Diary of a Mad Black Woman," is back with "Daddy's Little Girls," although he opted to stay behind the film lens this time around. Perry, who dressed in drag to play the straight-shooting Madea in "Diary" and its popular sequel, 2006's "Madea's Family Reunion," wrote "Daddy's Little Girls" because he saw a need to tell more positive stories of families in African-American communities. Tired of the stereotypes that all black men are drug dealers and thugs, he set out to prove that many of them are good fathers, and are wrongly portrayed in the media. "Now we have so many families of all different socio-economic groups, that just aren't reflected well in the media. We see a ton of the kids from 'The O.C.' and we see a ton of rich prep school kids in New York, or it's the extreme of 'the kids are on crystal meth in the heartland.' And we don't see your average, everyday family, who might be a blended family, who might be a family of divorce, and what happens to those people, and what happens to the men, specifically, in those relationships, who truly want to have a great relationship with their kids, and are often times denied that right," says "Daddy's Little Girl" actress Gabrielle Union, on the lack of diversity in the media today. Starring in the film is British Actor Idris Elba, who most audiences will recognize as Stringer Bell from HBO's "The Wire," as the "Daddy's Little Girls" protagonist. Elba's character Monty has three young girls that he shares with his ex-wife, a relationship that grows more strained as she exposes their children to her violent, drug-dealing boyfriend. In order to save them from an unfit household, Monty enlists the help of one of Atlanta's most successful lawyers (Union). Although the film tells a very American story, Elba was able to relate to its universal themes that transcend borders and cultures. "The accent's always a challenge for me, you know, I've lived here for a while so my ears are adapted to it, but it's always a challenge, and African-American culture is something that I'm used to now having lived here. And honestly, it's not too different, in the case of this story, it's not too different from any other experience around the world. Men have children, men lose their children, men have to fight for their children, that's something that the whole world can experience," says "Daddy's Little Girls" actor Idris Elba. As the battle for custody of his children ensues, Monty finds himself falling for his high-powered lawyer, who is always successful in court but less so in her personal life. She lives, works, and dates in white America though she years to connect with her African American roots, while Monty lives on the other side of town and struggles to make an honest living most of which goes to the care of his girls. Upon their first meeting, Union's character writes him off as a lowly chauffeur, but soon she sees in him the fatherly devotion and protective qualities that are lacking in the blind dates she finds herself subjected to. "Part of the reason is because of her world, where she is and where she lives. She's in corporate America, she's very high up in corporate America, so in the movie it explains it, that a lot of the faces that she sees, they don't look like her. So the faces that she sees, they don't look like her, and that makes it very difficult to find somebody. I mean, where do you meet, you live in a very nice neighbourhood where there are very few black people, so how do you meet black people, especially if you wanted to date a black man," says Tyler Perry, who wrote and directed "Daddy's Little Girls." Tyler Perry first got his start in theatre, where he took letters he wrote to himself and transformed them to hit plays and musicals, as a therapeutic way of dealing with a troubled childhood. "Daddy's Little Girls" is the first of his films to be written specifically for the medium.

ITN Source | February 22, 2007

Tags:. .tired. .roots. .exposes. .truly. .ton