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Tyler Perry recently opened up about a painful moment from his childhood concerning a beloved pet hamster.
While being honored at the Paley Honors Fall Gala in Beverly Hills on Wednesday (December 4), the 55-year-old Mea Culpa director shared a harrowing story of “childhood trauma” during his speech, recounting how his middle school science teacher killed his pet hamster in front of him. Perry said the unnamed teacher “hated” him.
“I didn’t know why he hated me,” he said. “But I was sitting in the room, and I was really leaning in and paying attention. He was like, ‘Why are you looking at me that like that? You don’t intimidate me.’ “
The media mogul recounted the day he told classmates about his hamster, Buddy, only for the teacher to challenge him.
“No, Black kids don’t have a hamster. You don’t have a hamster,” the teacher said, urging Perry to bring the animal to school.
“So I brought the hamster to school, and all the kids were fawning over how cute he was. Buddy was his name,” Perry shared. But what started as a proud moment turned tragic. The teacher asked if they could dissect the hamster, leaving Perry confused. “My little innocent boy self asked, ‘Will he live?’ And he said, ‘No,’” Perry recalled.
Feeling pressure from classmates, Perry handed over Buddy. “I tried to go to the back of the room, and he’s like, ‘No, no, no. Stay up here.’ So I watched him put his chloroform on Buddy and kill him in front of me,” he said.
Years later, the memory resurfaced during a therapy session. “It was a memory that I didn’t even know was there,” Perry said. “I saw myself walking home with this empty cage and realizing that no one asked me what happened or why the cage was empty. Not one person in my life.”
Perry’s speech also touched on broader challenges he faced growing up. “I survived, and I’m here,” he said, reflecting on the AIDS pandemic, police brutality, and systemic racism.
“The people who hurt me did not steal my compassion,” he said. “They could not rob me of my heart and my care for others, and they could not grip away my ability to heal.”
Perry described himself as “the freest version of myself that I’ve ever been.”
“I have turned toward all of that pain, threw my arms wide open, embraced every bit of it, stared the shame, went down in it, and took the power out of it so that I could heal,” he said.
He closed with a heartfelt reflection on his purpose. “I want to spread as much joy and good as I can,” Perry said. “I want to make my mother proud, and I want to make my son proud of his father — something that I was never able to be of the man who raised me.”
In a 2010 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Perry detailed the severe physical abuse he endured from his father and the sexual abuse inflicted by multiple adults during his childhood. Perry described his early years as “a living hell,” revealing that he often used his imagination to escape the harsh realities he faced at home.
Perry spoke with People magazine in 2019 about his journey toward healing, acknowledging the deep-seated anger and confusion he grappled with in his teenage years and twenties as a result of his traumatic experiences. He credited writing and storytelling as therapeutic outlets that allowed him to process and overcome his past.
His films and shows have cumulatively grossed over $660 million, and his net worth is an estimated $1 billion. In 2020, Perry was included in Time’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world and received the Governor’s Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences
