Actor Derek Dixon spoke out Tuesday in his first television interview since filing a lawsuit against media mogul Tyler Perry, sharing allegations of sexual harassment and assault he says he endured from the billionaire.
Dixon, who filed a $260 million lawsuit against Perry in June, sat down with ABC News Live anchor Linsey Davis to discuss his allegedly complicated history with the media mogul, saying he did not “want to stay silent about it anymore” even though “it’s a vulnerable thing to talk about.”
“It’s been hard,” Dixon said. “There’s a lot of shame around it. Just trying to think what you could have done better and having to deal with the judgment of how you could’ve ended it better without being in that situation.”
Perry, who has produced 24 feature films, 20 stage plays, 17 television shows and two New York Times best-selling books, owns one of the largest film studios in the country, Tyler Perry Studios, and has also earned a spot in the billionaire’s club, according to his website. The mogul also received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his support through large-scale donations to the NAACP.
Dixon says he first met Perry at a studio opening party in 2019 while he was working at an events company. According to Dixon, Perry asked him if he was an actor, gave him his number and said “we’ll talk about this.”
In early 2020, Dixon landed the role as “Dale” in Perry’s BET series “The Oval,” appearing in 85 episodes between 2021 to 2025 — a career move that he said was something “he always dreamed about.”
According to the civil complaint, when Dixon was working on the show, Perry began sending text messages to him, with some being sexual in nature.
“One of them says, ‘What’s it going to take for you to have guiltless sex? Have y’all found that in therapy yet? I would hope that you would let someone hold and make love to you,'” Dixon said.
In a statement to ABC News, Perry’s lawyer Matthew Boyd said “this is an individual who got close to Tyler Perry for what now appears to be nothing more than setting up a scam.”
The attorney added: “Tyler will not be shaken down and we are confident these fabricated claims of harassment will fail.”
In January 2020, Dixon claims Perry’s physical behavior allegedly started resembling the tone of his text messages, with Dixon saying one alleged incident occurred when he was having drinks at the mogul’s guest house.
Instead of driving home that night, Dixon said Perry told him to stay in the guest quarters, which is when he said the encounter took a turn, the lawsuit alleges.
“I got into bed and then I noticed that he climbed into bed with me as well and started rubbing my leg. I jumped out of bed…he had said, ‘Turn around so I can look at you’ and just comment on how I looked. And then he got up and left. So I thought after that instance, it was pretty clear that I was not interested in that type of a relationship,” Dixon told ABC News.
Then, at the end of the second season of “The Oval,” Dixon’s character was shot four times in the chest, which he said made him realize “if I don’t make him happy, I could stay dead on the show.”
After they had finished shooting that scene, Dixon claims Perry invited him to have drinks in his trailer, where Dixon said Perry allegedly asked if he “was attracted to him.”
Dixon, in what he said was an attempt to de-escalate the situation, said he told the mogul he was an “attractive man” but he was not interested, which is when he claims the incident became physical.
“That’s when he pushed me up against the wall and grabbed my a** again. I remember leaving his trailer and calling my friend immediately and just feeling sick about it,” Dixon said.
Another incident between Dixon and Perry allegedly occurred in June 2021, when Dixon claims he was at Perry’s home in Atlanta.
During that visit, the mogul allegedly made “several alcoholic beverages for himself and demanded to know why Dixon was not having sex with anyone,” the complaint said.
Perry continued to probe with questions and “insisted that the two were becoming increasingly drunk and it was time to end the night,” according to the complaint.
According to Dixon, Perry then told Dixon needed to be “in your underwear to measure.”
He reached down and pulled my underwear down and grabbed my a** and I tried to stop him and pull back my underwear up and he grabbed my arms and said, ‘No, no, no, it’s OK, just go with it.’ I said, ‘Stop, I don’t want to be naked,'” Dixon said.
He said he “didn’t know what to do” in that moment and attempted to distract and de-escalate the situation, with Dixon he saying he eventually locked himself alone in the guesthouse bathroom.
The actor said he ended communication with Perry in the spring of 2024 and he decided to leave “The Oval” in September 2024. He also said “Losing It,” a show he had been writing that the mogul owns the rights to, was never developed beyond the pilot.
Then in January, Dixon filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency responsible for protecting workers from discrimination.
Dixon said he came up with the amount of $260 million in damages for for his subsequent lawsuit for two reasons: “Part of that number is my lost job, my lost income, the loss of a show. The other part of that is a deterrent for how do you stop a billionaire who won’t stop themselves from doing this.”
Dixon said he hopes Perry takes “accountability for what happened” and that the lawsuit taught him to “not treat your employees this way and to never use someone’s dream to coerce them into a relationship that’s not professional.”
