Essence Atkins Criticizes Tyler Perry Casting Kim Kardashian In “Temptation”
Long-time Hollyweird actress Essence Atkins has joined the bandwagon of people who were not too pleased with Tyler Perry’s casting of Kim Kardashian in his latest film “Temptation.”
Atkins recently aired out her thoughts on Perry’s decision to cast Kimmy cakes to Sister 2 Sister magazine, alluding to the fact that he did so because of Kim’s popularity and overlooked the fact that she wasn’t a traditional actress.
via S2S Magazine
“I found it interesting that Tyler did that with Temptation, hiring Kim Kardashian because she has 16 million Twitter followers, which would seem like a brilliant marketing plan,” Essence told Sister 2 Sister.
Tyler admitted that he cast the reality star to draw members of her large fan base to the theaters. The movie earned $22.3 million its debut weekend. According to E!, the film performed better than any other non-Madea Tyler movie, with the one exception of Why Did I Get Married Too.
“It’s not a failure, but it did worse than his movies usually do just based on him,” clarified Essence. “I thought that was an interesting finding. Your experiment didn’t work.”
She then went on to blast the film’s box office performance and send a few shots at Kim, saying she should just stick to reality television and dating Yeezy. Peep the rest of her rant on flip…
via S2S Magazine
However, Essence pointed out that just because a reality star may have a huge social media following, doesn’t mean her fans will follow her to scripted TV.
“He has one of the biggest Twitter personalities out there in his movies, and he had one of the worst box office weekends.”
“People want to see good stories. It’s not necessarily that they want to see Kim Kardashian in a movie. They want to see her in a bikini. They want to see her with Kanye [West]. They want to see her on her show talking about her life with her sisters, but that doesn’t mean that they want to see her in a movie,” she said. “The fact that people want to see their lives and the volatility of that…. I don’t’ think that it translates at all.”
Essence isn’t saying much that hasn’t already been said, but it does register a little differently coming from an African-American actress versus movie critics or non-Tyler Perry fans.
On the flip side, Essence is also one of only a handful of black actresses who Tyler Perry hasn’t yet tapped for one of his films. So do you think she has a point? Or is she just super salty for getting overlooked?
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