Whitney Houston: Tyler Perry on What He Believes Contributed to Icon’s Death
Even a decade after her unexpected death, fans and close friends of Whitney Houston are still trying to grapple with what led to her passing at just 48 years old. While an autopsy reports that Houston died accidentally drowning with cocaine in her system, others say it’s what led to her drug use that’s to blame. According to Tyler Perry, Houston struggled with maintaining an image to make her Black audience accept her.
Tyler Perry says public scrutiny may have contributed to Whitney Houston’s death
Perry and Houston were close friends. He even tried to help her through her addiction struggles. While appearing on comedian Kevin Hart’s Peacock talk show, Perry discussed the pressures of being successful as a Black man, and how one’s own community to contributes negatively to their self-esteem. He says he believes Houston was too concerned with public scrutiny.
“When I think about somebody who I love dearly is Whitney, I did all I could to try and help her, man. Whitney Houston,” he told Hart. “She—I believe she still would have been alive today had we not tried to make her into something she wasn’t.” Many close friends of Houston’s say she hated her Cinderella/pop star image and felt it was too difficult to hold up to.
“Her being booed at the Soul Train Awards was one of the worst things that could have happened to her in her life,” Perry said, referencing her being booed during both the 1988 and 1989 award ceremonies when her name was read in a category. Black audiences accused Houston of being whitewashed.
“People saying she’s ‘white’ or she’s this or she’s that, made her want to show…she came to this industry very young, but it made her want to show that she was something different,” he added. “Instead of just realizing, let me keep my eye on this—she’s got the best voice in the world—if she had kept her eye on that, none of this other stuff would have mattered.”
Brandy shares similar sentiments about Whitney Houston’s death
Another close friend and mentee of Houston’s is Brandy. The two co-starred in the 1998 film Cinderella, where Brandy played the first Black version of the Disney princess, and Houston as her fairy godmother. They maintained a close bond, and Brandy says she witnessed Houston struggle due to public perception.
Moreso, she says Houston losing her high-quality voice later in life took its toll on her. She also says people in Houston’s inner circle were seemingly enablers.
“It’s natural for people to want to place blame. I placed a lot of blame on a lot of people too, when it came to Whitney,” Brandy writes in the foreword of Gerrick Kennedy’s Didn’t We Almost Have It All: In Defense of Whitney Houston. “We loved her so much and needed something or someone to attach blame to because it was so hard to accept that she was gone.”
She added of Houston falling under public pressure and opinions: “We don’t really have the right to speak on anything that she had to go through in her life. No one knows what she was running from, and no one knows what she was trying to overcome. No one knows the costs that came with being Whitney Houston. That level of fame, that level of expectation, that level of pressure.”
Whitney Houston’s ex-husband Bobby Brown wishes he could have done more to save her
Brown and Houston were married for 14 years. The public spent years blaming Brown for her downfall. But Brown insists he never introduced Houston to drugs. Still, he says they were co-dependent on one another.
While Brandy and Perry say the public’s opinion affected Houston, Brown says their divorce played a part in her struggles as well. He made the revelation in his two-part biography special on A&E.
