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. (continued from page 1)
Their debut CD, Kirk Franklin & The Family, earned a GRAMMY and took them to the top of the charts, becoming the highest grossing gospel album of the year. They went on to record two additional CDs while rewriting the face of gospel with the revolutionary urban contemporary style, and Tamela leading such classics as “Now Behold the Lamb” and “Lean On Me” featuring Bono and R. Kelly.
It was with Franklin that David Mann first ventured onto the theatrical stage when they were both cast by David Talbert in a stage play, He Say, She Say, But What Does God Say. It was during that venture that he met Perry and the rest, as they say, is history.
When not on set for their new TV show, the couple is hard at work on their first CD as a recording duo for their own recording label, TillyMann Music Group. Their first project, Tamela’s 2005 CD Gotta Keep Movin‘, debuted at #3 on Billboard Top gospel album sales chart and they each currently have solo projects on the market: The Live Experience by Tamela and David’s Mr. Brown’s Good Ol‘ Time Church, a comedy CD with bits of Mann singing gospel tunes as Mr. Brown.
Tamela – who made her film debut in Diary of a Mad Black Woman in 2005 – is tentatively calling the new CD, due this summer, Lord at the Altar,.
“It’s a bit out of the norm,” she reveals, “and I’ve also done a couple of new urban pieces.”
“We’ve put some love songs on there,” David explains. “It’s Christian love music for couples. One of the songs is called “Heaven” and it just talks about a couple and the way...
“‘When I look at you, you make me feel like I'm in heaven,’” Tamela says, completing his sentence with the rest of the song lyric. “‘And it will make you feel brand-new, just your skin touching mine.’ It’s just about people being in love.”
Part of the excitement for the album is that it showcases Tamela’s writing and her love for church. In fact, it all boils down to church for the Fort Worth native who first met her husband of 21 years through a mutual friend and, shortly after, joined his singing group The Humble Hearts.
“Bottom line: it’s all ministry to us,” states Tamela, who started a marriage ministry with her husband – Biblical Marriage in a Practical World – to encourage couples and families to come together.
“I know it’s film and television, but we still want our spirit to be seen as what we are portraying, which is Christians, and to be able to get a message across without just beating Jesus on the people. Keeping our base and staying rooted is the main thing.”
---
About the Writer
Lisa Collins, a Los Angeles native and resident, is a syndicated columnist, writer, publisher and former Billboard Magazine columnist. Her career in gospel began in 1988 with her creation of “Inside Gospel,” a daily/weekly syndicated radio series that provided news, profiles and product updates relative to the gospel music community. For the next eight years, she would also serve as executive producer of the show that was broadcast in more than 100 markets nationwide. Collins has also served as a segment producer for BET and authored well over 300 articles on a variety of issues for a number of national publications from Essence to Upscale. Her background in the field of entertainment reporting is extensive, featuring cover stories and interviews with the likes of Richard Pryor, Michael Jackson and Prince.
