TENZ

You know it’s tea when 2 bottoms bump purses and paint eachother.

Judges Score! The men from the illustrious “House of Tyler Perry” face off over profiting from gay gaze while reinforcing harmful rhetoric.

Actor Brandon Black, who portrayed Tim in A Madea Homecoming, widely recognized as the first openly gay character within the Tyler Perry film universe, recently called out a growing contradiction in the industry: actors willing to play q***r roles on screen, yet critical, distant, or outright dismissive of q***r people in real life.

His comments arrive on the heels of remarks made by Xavier Smalls, who plays Angel on Beauty in Black. During an Instagram Live, Smalls spoke about his Christian faith, stating that God does not allow “unholy” people into heaven, a category he framed as inclusive of “all sinners,” explicitly naming gay people alongside liars, alcoholics, and murderers.

Historically, q***rness has been uniquely scrutinized, politicized, and moralized, particularly within Black religious spaces that also serve as cultural anchors. Even when softened, this rhetoric reinforces a hierarchy where q***r identity remains under question.

Within Tyler Perry Studios, q***r representation has long been limited, often filtered through religious respectability politics, comedic caricature, or moral framing. From tambourine player punchlines to side character stereotypes, the portrayal has rarely existed without commentary.

At the same time, casting within Perry’s projects has sparked its own ongoing conversation. Since his early stage plays, audiences have noted a distinct “gay gaze” in the presentation of male actors, an aesthetic awareness that sits in quiet tension with the narratives being told.

When actors profit from q***r intimacy, vulnerability, and survival, while reinforcing rhetoric that frames q***r identity as morally flawed, it stops being performance and becomes policing.
Queerness becomes acceptable as content, but not as reality.

If you benefit from q***r narratives, you do not get to publicly undermine q***r existence without critique.

However…..We gonna watch Beauty in Black season 3 though…that Varney scene played by Terrell Carter just hit the timeline.