The Media, the Message & the Manns
By Lisa Collins, senior music editor, GospelMusicChannel.com
Their last big co-starring credits were easy enough to come by.
“The studio just called and said you're in,” recalls the stars of Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns, David and Tamela Mann, of how they landed their co-starring role in his latest film, Madea Goes to Jail.
Truth is, there’s more chemistry than business between the duo, and Perry, who joined forces in 1999 when they were cast in his first stage play, I Can Do Bad By Myself, have been working together ever since.
“A lot of times he would allow us to just flow with it,” shares David. “He might say something and Tamela will say something back and then I'll say something, and the chemistry that we have since 1999 just kind of flows; it pops.”
In the last several years, it has done more than pop. It has jumpstarted the careers of the duo, who has parlayed their success in nearly all of Perry's stage plays, to recurring appearances on his TV series, Tyler Perry's House of Payne, on the silver screen in the Lionsgate film releases Meet the Browns and most recently, Medea Goes to Jail.
Not only has the chemistry worked for Perry, dubbed “Hollywood's newest box office king,” but for audiences whose embrace of the Cora and Mr. Brown characters in Meet the Browns generated over $20 million its opening weekend, landing the film at number two on the box office charts and led to the development of the TV sitcom version that recently debuted on TBS.
“It started from the stage play,” says David of the show featuring “Downtown Leroy Brown” who turns the house he shares with his daughter Cora (played by his real-life wife, Tamela) into the Brown Meadows Home for Seniors.
“Mr. Brown just had a small role at first. It wasn’t this big thing, but then it just kept growing and growing and the costumes kept growing. The play was successful, the movie was successful, and so we approached TBS about the show. The next thing we knew, we had recorded 10 episodes.”
Based on the success of those episodes, TBS has ordered 80 more of the show, a spin-off of Perry’s House of Payne and is directed by Perry on a neighboring soundstage.
And while these Dallas-born entertainment veterans got their start on stage, it was their stirring lead vocals for The Family, GRAMMY Award-winning gospel superstar Kirk Franklin’s former back-up group that came first.
