Derek Dixon is speaking out about his bombshell lawsuit accusing Tyler Perry of sexual assault.
The actor, who starred in 85 episodes of the mogul’s BET series The Oval, reflected on his time working with Perry in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, detailing the alleged encounters that led him to file the $260 million lawsuit.
In both the lawsuit and the THR interview, Dixon alleges that Perry climbed into bed with him on one occasion and groped his bare buttocks non-consensually on another occasion.
“Everyone deserves to go to work and do their job without their boss trying to have sex with them,” Dixon said in the interview. “My goal is to help ensure that the next generation of actors and creatives don’t have to choose between their dreams and their dignity.”
When reached for comment, a spokesperson for Perry provided Entertainment Weekly with the same statement from attorney Matthew Boyd that the producer’s representatives shared after Dixon’s lawsuit was filed in June: “This is an individual who got close to Tyler Perry for what now appears to be nothing more than setting up a scam. But Tyler will not be shaken down and we are confident these fabricated claims of harassment will fail.”
In his lawsuit, Dixon accused Perry of quid pro quo sexual harassment, work environment harassment, sexual harassment, workplace gender violence, violation of the Bane Act, sexual battery, sexual assault, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
As described in his lawsuit, Dixon alleged that Perry touched him flirtatiously in bed at the producer’s home in Douglasville County, Ga., about four months after the two men first met at an Atlanta party and shortly after Dixon shot an episode of Perry’s Oval spinoff show Ruthless.
“[Perry] climbed into bed with me and began rubbing my thigh,” Dixon claimed toTHR, reiterating his account in his lawsuit. “I immediately jumped out of the bed and said, ‘I’m not that sexual,’ and stood up until he left the room. I thought that my reaction made it clear that night that I was not interested.”
Shortly thereafter, Dixon claimed that Perry told him that his Ruthless character would recur on The Oval — but at the end of his first season, the character was shot four times. “He said that if I did a good job, I’d probably survive,” Dixon said, alleging that Perry told him that on a phone call.
Derek Dixon/ Instagram
Derek Dixon in January 2021.
Dixon claimed that Perry said that “nobody gives him anything” on the same phone call. “He gives and gives, nobody ever gives back,” Dixon told THR. “I remember feeling my stomach drop when he said this. I knew that I couldn’t piss him off or my character could easily just stay dead.”
The actor alleged that Perry later visited him in his trailer on the Oval set and asked him flirtatious questions before grabbing his buttocks and leaving. “After he would do things like that, he would say things like, ‘We need to just be business. We need to just be professional,’ and I would think, ‘Great. Yes,'” Dixon told THR, echoing his claims in the lawsuit. “Every time I thought it would stop.”
Perhaps the most serious of Dixon’s allegations stem from a June 2021 incident wherein Perry allegedly invited the actor to his house to discuss a pilot that Dixon wrote. (The actor previously claimed that Perry found the script “hilarious, and he loved it and wanted to shoot the pilot.”)
“He told me to give him a goodnight hug and as I did, he abruptly and forcefully pulled down my underwear and groped my bare ass,” Dixon alleged in the suit and to THR. “When I tried to pull my underwear back up, he grabbed my wrists to keep me from putting them back on. I couldn’t believe what was happening.”
The actor told THR that he thought that Perry was about to rape him. “I told him ‘No,’ ‘Stop,’ and ‘I don’t want this,'” Dixon alleged to the outlet and in his claims in the suit. “But he wasn’t stopping. He just told me to relax and let it happen and that he wasn’t going to hurt me.”
Dixon said that after sending Perry away to get pizza, he locked himself in the producer’s bathroom and fell asleep on the floor.
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Dixon told THR why he didn’t immediately make his allegations public. “For a long time, I convinced myself that it was part of the industry, or that somehow I had to accept it to keep working,” he said. “But eventually, I couldn’t stay silent anymore.”
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly