Tyler Perry has been vocal about his longtime friendship with the late Whitney Houston, and he recently revealed in an interview on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight that he was disgusted with how the media handled her death.
“It was so blatantly disrespectful,” he said of the paparazzi who tried to take pictures of the R&B singer in her death. “I understand she was a superstar, but she didn’t deserve to be treated that way in the media toward the end.”
Perry, who supplied the plane for Houston’s funeral, described how he tried to keep her body protected from the public’s eye. “We tried to send a hearse as a decoy. They found out we had the body in a van and there were paparazzi 50 deep following the van. I had to move the plane into the hangar, close the door and bring the van in,” he said.
But even during this process, Perry said one of the hired drivers tried to take pictures of them putting her body on the plane. “It was just beyond disrespectful for her family and everyone else,” he said.
Houston, who died of an accidental drowning in February, was buried at Fairview Cemetery in Westfield, New Jersey.