Perry tells ESSENCE.com Ross is a childhood idol he’d love to work with on a film project. Except she won’t return his calls.
“She’s been ignoring me for years,” Perry said while promoting his latest movie, Madea’s Witness Protection. “She’s the only person that I have dreamed of working with that will not return my phone calls.” The director adds that Ross did speak with him once. “That was it, she never called me again. She said, “No!” And that was it.” So does being friends with Oprah help Perry’s case at all? “Not when it comes to Diana Ross,” he jokes. “You can be friends with Obama, Oprah, Trump — that is Diana Ross! So, no.”
Perry did manage to get two other childhood idols, Marla Gibbs and John Amos, into his latest Madea movie. “To be around Florence from The Jeffersons and James [Amos] from Good Times… to stand in the presence of people that I’ve admired is amazing.”
“If I had met them when I was 10 years old watching those shows I would have been blow away. So to have them working with me is fascinating.”