‘Divorce In The Black’ Exclusive: Cory Hardrict And Meagan Good Talk About The Ways Tyler Perry Challenged Them

Tyler Perry’s newest film Divorce in the Black arrived on Prime Video Thursday, July 11 and is currently a hot topic on social media.

The film stars Meagan Good as Ava, a banking professional whose life hits a speed bump when her husband asks for her divorce. Ava is the “but I’mma stick beside him” type but when her friends and family push her to see how Dallas, played by Cory Hardrict, isn’t worth fighting for, Ava begins to accept that her marriage is over and rebuild herself stronger than ever before. Of course that’s when Dallas ups the ante on his bad behavior.

Our Sr. Content Director Janeé Bolden sat down with Meagan Good and Cory Hardrict ahead of the film’s release to discuss their longtime friendship, working with Tyler Perry and more.

In addition to Good and Hardrict, the film also stars Richard Lawson, Debbi Morgan, Taylor Polidore, Shannon Wallace and Joseph Lee Anderson as Ava’s supportive family and friends.

“There’s many things I love about Tyler Perry, but one of the things that he wrote in the script is just having that strong support system, with her father, with her mother, with her best friend, having that covering — people who will tell you the truth even when you’re not ready to hear it, and just that unconditional love, loving you no matter what, walking through it with you and by you — that’s invaluable when you have,” Good told BOSSIP.

Dallas, who is drunk and disruptive throughout the film comes from a family of miscreants that mirror or encourage his bad behavior.

“I would say my family was my support system, even though I was wrong, they supported it,” Hardrict told BOSSIP of his onscreen family. “And you know what? That’s real life. You know how your family,when you do something wrong they still like, ‘That’s my bae, I’m still riding!’ That’s how my family was. The families had different dynamics but they loved each person and that’s part of real life.”

While we hope Dallas’ reality doesn’t hit too close to home for audiences — we knew from the time we saw the first trailer that Good and Hardrict, who each recently endured divorces (Good split from producer/pastor DeVon Franklin in 2021 after nine years of marriage, while Hardrict and wife of 15 years, actress Tia Mowry divorced in 2023) could likely relate to their characters divorce experience. Dallas and Ava are from a small town where news spreads like rapidfire, and the onscreen effect in the film resembles the fishbowl of celebrity personal drama.

“Welcome to Hollywood!” Good agreed. “With Ava, the biggest thing that I related to was obviously the divorce, and the family as well, because my family has been absolutely incredible and so supportive and walked me through it, but just dealing with the fact that she’s getting a divorce, that she thought her life was gonna go one way and then all of a sudden it’s going completely different, and then having to get to a place of getting excited about what’s next in her life and kind of really hoping you know for just everything that she wants even though it’s different than what she thought it would look like.”

“When I read the script, I would have done the movie regardless of my personal life situation because it was all on the page and it was a great film,” Hardrict said. “It was a great characters, for the culture, that people needed to see. I’m an actor. I know how to turn it on when the cameras come on. I’m an artist, this is what I do and I enjoy doing it. I pulled 30 years of experience into this movie, passion, emotion, vulnerability everything excitement and I was ready to go shout to Mr. Perry for hiring us.”

Public opinion has long been divided on the subject of Tyler Perry — and his works. Even just 24 hours after the release of Divorce in the Black the film has been hit with heavy criticism. Both Good and Hardrict said they came into the experience with Perry knowing the production wouldn’t be easy.

“I knew it was going to be a challenge in a good way you know which I was really excited about,” Good told BOSSIP. “He [Perry] challenged me to approach things differently in some scenes than I would, I think the one scene in the trailer when he shows up at the house, I had a certain approach and Tyler kept saying, ‘Just try this, try this, try this…’ Once I finally saw it, ‘Ohh there it is, there it is, there it is!’ When I saw it, I was really, really happy with the scene because it’s something different for me. I think sometimes when you grow up in the business you have a certain mentality about some things. Every character is completely different, but this challenged me. Tyler challenged me to think about it in a completely different way that I hadn’t thought of and I thought that it really, really served the scene and the characters. I was very, very happy.”

“What I love about Mr. Perry is he lets you find it,” Hardrict told BOSSIP. ” He lets you move off your instincts, but you move so fast. In other productions, most of the time you have downtime,  you sit down, you can sit in the scene and do your study and rehearsal, but here you were just moving. I think that gives you that survival instinct where you can also pull out your best work because you’re moving.  It’s like that guerilla filmmaking, even though this is not guerilla.  It put me in that, where I started from.  You just gotta move.  You gotta be on your toes. I love everything about this.  I would love to continue working in this way of doing scenes.  It was a great time. I had a good time I had fun.

While Ava and Dallas don’t have the healthiest relationship, Hardrict said he and Good have a familial friendship that extends back decades. He even credits Good for helping him land the role of Dallas.

“It’s been amazing working with Megan,” Hardrict told BOSSIP. “We’ve worked together 20 years ago and Megan has always been someone who’s been a professional, who’s been kind, who had a great family, so to work with her in this, we had some chemistry but to work on this was even better because I know this person, I know her heart. She gave Tyler a little bump like, ‘You know Cory Hardrict?’  I’m very grateful for Megan for doing that — allowing Tyler to hire me and I didn’t take that lightly. So I wanted to do good for Tyler for Megan. My name is on the line and I’m a professional when I step on stage.  It’s go time!”

Divorce in the Black is streaming on Prime Video now.