Film mogul Tyler Perry changed his coronavirus policy for his Atlanta, Georgia, based film studio and will now force all employees to be vaccinated to be allowed on the lot.
Perry’s decision takes the recent return-to-work rules agreed upon by the studios and unions one step farther. The agreement, hammered out last June, does not require blanket vaccination and gives the option to require vaccines on a production-by-production basis.
But now Perry is stepping up and requiring vaccines for all projects being produced at his studio. The Medea star has lamented the lack of uniformity in addressing the virus in Hollywood.
“Between the conflicting rules of the CDC and the unions, as an independent studio it’s difficult to navigate and operate efficiently,” Perry told Deadline. “I wish they were on the same page, but I also understand the complexities of a pandemic that changes daily.”
Perry’s is not the first studio to implement blanket vaccinations. Both Netflix and Disney have also issued rules requiring all actors, producers, and staffers to be vaccinated to return to work. Other studios have opted for the show-by-show implementation.
Tyler Perry Studios announced its new policy last week and added that booster shots are also required.
The decision was reportedly reached after production of his BET+ series, All the Queen’s Men was delayed when more than a dozen members of the production had to be put on the isolation list due to contact tracing and positive COVID tests.
Perry tried a “bubble” approach in May of 2020, isolating all production staff at his studios to keep them from contact with outsiders who may have been infected with the virus.
The policy was entitled, “Camp Quarantine,” and was aimed at putting his crews back to work when other Hollywood productions were shutting down.
“I want it to be abundantly clear that there was no way I could or would consider putting people back to work without a plan that takes extreme measures to try and mitigate as much risk as possible in our productions, and I think we’ve managed to do just that,” Perry wrote at the time.
Perry has been a vocal supporter of the various vaccines and even held a vaccination drive at his studios last April.
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