Can Tyler Perry's BET Special Dispel COVID-19 Vaccine Fears?

ATLANTA — Film and TV studio owner Tyler Perry is using his influence and to encourage Black people to take the COVID-19 vaccine when it is available to them.

Tonight Perry will host “COVID-19 and the Black Community/A Tyler Perry Special,” premiering on BET at 9 p.m., Easter and Pacific Times, and featuring interviews with Atlanta healthcare experts and footage of him receiving the Pfizer vaccine.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage on and disproportionately affect Black people, the Atlanta filmmaker seeks to dispel myths and allay fears about taking the vaccine. According to a report produced by a collaboration of the Kaiser Family Foundation and ESPN’s The Undefeated, 35 percent of Black people polled — roughly one in every three — said they would not take a vaccine even if it were free and deemed safe by scientists.

A sordid history of medical experimentation on black bodies — from Henrietta Lacks’ DNA being harvested in 1951 without her knowledge to the Tuskegee Experiment of the 1930s in which government health officials needlessly withheld syphilis treatment from poor black men — has engendered healthy apprehension of authorities offering free medical services. Coupled with the vaccine’s rapid development, Perry said he understands people’s reticence.

“I understand why there is skepticism about the vaccine,” he told CBS’s Gayle King in an interview on Tuesday.

So when officials at Atlanta’s Grady Health System invited Perry — who is not over 65 — to take the vaccine as part of an awareness campaign, he acknowledged his own concerns and decided to film medical experts answering his queries for BET.

“I told them, ‘I’ll do that, but you’ve got to answer my questions,’” he said, in the interview with King that aired Tuesday on CBS This Morning and later posted to Twitter.

The special will feature interviews with Grady physicians Dr. Kimberly Manning and Dr. Carlos del Rio, Executive Associate Dean at Emory Unversity School of Medicine.

Perry, who owns Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta, has a long history of community involvement in the city. While he is known for producing the Madea series of plays and movies, films like “Acrimony” and “Why Did I Get Married?” and TV shows including “The Oval” and “Meet the Browns,” his philanthropic work through The Perry Foundation has been noteworthy. That commitment to his community was recognized earlier this year when the Academy of Theater Arts and Sciences announced that he was one of this year’s recipients of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.