Tyler Perry has been slapped with quite the lawsuit.
News broke on Tuesday, June 17, that Derek A. Dixon, who starred in The Oval, one of the Madea star's television series, is suing him for sexual harassment, assault and battery.
Read on for everything we know about the multi-million dollar lawsuit, who the accuser is, and the movie mogul's response.
© Frazer HarrisonThe lawsuit
Derek is suing Tyler for a whopping $260 million, accusing him of subjecting him "to escalating sexual harassment, assault and battery, and professional retaliation when Mr. Dixon did not reciprocate Mr. Perry's unwanted advances."
Per the lawsuit, which was filed last week in a Los Angeles court, Tyler and Derek met in 2019, when the latter worked for an event company that had organized a party for Tyler. They exchanged numbers, and Tyler allegedly offered Derek career advancement, he claims.
Shortly after, the lawsuit further claims Tyler began sending him sexually suggestive text messages, screenshots of which he included in the suit. One of the instances of sexual harassment included in the suit describes a day in 2020 that Derek spent the night in Tyler's Georgia home, and when he was sleeping in the guest room, Tyler allegedly got into bed with Derek and began "rubbing Dixon's body around his inner thigh in a highly sexual and suggestive manner," per the lawsuit.
Though Derek says he stopped responding to Tyler's texts afterwards, he was then offered a role on his show The Oval. Another incident took place in 2021, when Derek again stayed at Tyler's home. He claims that when Tyler asked for a good night hug, he pulled down Derek's underwear and "began to vigorously grab, grope, and play with Dixon's buttocks in a sexual manner."
© InstagramWho is Derek?
Little is known of Derek, a budding actor with less than 10,000 followers on Instagram, where his last photo is from August 2024.
He made his acting debut in 2021 on the The Oval spin-off Ruthless as Dale, and later appeared as Dale on The Oval for 85 episodes.
© WireImageTyler's response
Per the New York Times, in a statement, Tyler's lawyer Matthew Boyd has called the lawsuit a "scam." He maintained: "Tyler will not be shaken down and we are confident these fabricated claims of harassment will fail."
© Getty ImagesTyler's net worth and family life
In 2020, Tyler officially became a billionaire, and per Forbes, today has a net worth of $1.4 billion. According to the outlet, his wealth comes both from his cut as a producer and from a library of media dating back to the early 1990s, and the fact that he owns 100% of the content he's created in the last three decades.
He is largely private about his personal life; from around 2009 to 2020, he was in a relationship with Ethiopian model, filmmaker and activist Gelila Bekele, and in November 2014, they welcomed a son, Aman. Tyler confirmed he was single in 2020.
