Key Takeaways
- Tyler Perry shot Why Did I Get Married Again? in just four days, a pace Tasha Smith called “refined insanity.”
- Taraji P. Henson said Perry’s speed works because he knows exactly what footage he needs, drawing on similarly brief shoots for Acrimony and Straw.
- The Netflix sequel reunites Perry with Smith, Sharon Leal, Michael Jai White, Jill Scott, and other franchise veterans for a Lake Como wedding story centered on how their characters and marriages have evolved.
Tyler Perry apparently didn't need weeks—or even one—to shoot Why Did I Get Married Again?
Taraji P. Henson, Tasha Smith, and Sharon Leal revealed during a new interview with BlackTree TV that Perry filmed the latest installment of his Why Did I Get Married? franchise in just four days, a production schedule that even surprised Henson despite her long history of working with the filmmaker.
"We get less days of filming," Smith said when the actresses were asked what had changed about working with Perry over the years. She recalled having roughly three weeks to make the original 2007 movie before dropping the number for the new Netflix sequel.
"Four days, which was insane," Smith said. "Refined insanity."
Henson, who joins the franchise with Why Did I Get Married Again?, acknowledged that Perry's pace requires some adjustment. "It's a little scary because you are like, 'Okay, I'm going to trust that he got it,'" she said. "But people are really happy with the film, and that's kind of what's remarkable about him."
According to Henson, Perry's ability to move that quickly comes from knowing precisely what footage he needs.
"He knows what he wants. And he's a technician at what he does," she explained. "He knows exactly what's going on. He knows exactly what he has, what he doesn't have."
Henson has experienced Perry's accelerated production schedule before. She said her work on Acrimony took five days, while Straw required four. For the latter, Henson was simultaneously working on Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist, shooting Perry's film during a brief break before returning to her other production.
The four-day turnaround adds another wrinkle to an already unusual shoot. Perry previously revealed that he broke his collarbone in a bike accident just two weeks before filming began. The injury led him to repeatedly warn cast members to "watch my shoulder," including while directing a major dance sequence. The phrase eventually became the name of the cast's group chat.
Why Did I Get Married Again? reunites Perry with Smith, Sharon Leal, Michael Jai White, Lamman Rucker, Jill Scott, and Richard T. Jones, while Henson is among the biggest new additions. The story moves the longtime friends to Lake Como, Italy, for the wedding of Marcus and Angela's daughter, where the group discovers that their now-grown children have picked up more than a few traits from their parents.
The film follows 2007's Why Did I Get Married? and 2010's Why Did I Get Married Too?, but the returning actors aren't simply revisiting the same relationships. Perry has said he's most interested in showing how the characters have "grown, changed, matured and settled into what marriage is."
Smith hopes that translates beyond the screen.
"I hope people are having Why Did I Get Married parties," she told BlackTree TV, "just celebrating their life, their obstacles, the things that they've been able to overcome within their own relationships."
