Derek Dixon, the man who filed a $260 million sexual assault lawsuit against filmmaker Tyler Perry, spoke publicly for the first time Wednesday in an interview with ABC News Live, saying he will not withdraw his claims and describing repeated incidents he alleges occurred while he worked for Perry.
In the sit-down with anchor Linsey Davis, Dixon recounted a series of encounters he says began after meeting Perry at a 2019 studio launch event and continued while he was a cast member on Perry’s BET series The Oval. Dixon said he felt he could no longer "stay silent about it anymore" and described the emotional toll of coming forward, saying, "It’s been hard. There’s a lot of shame around it."
Dixon said his suit, which seeks $260 million in damages, reflects both what he says were concrete career losses and an effort to deter similar conduct. "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," he told ABC News Live.
According to Dixon, Perry first asked for his contact information in 2019. Dixon said he was cast as Dale on The Oval in early 2020 and appeared in 85 episodes between 2021 and 2025. He alleges that while working on the series Perry began sending text messages of a sexual nature, including one message Dixon quoted on camera: "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 described several alleged in-person incidents. He said that in January 2020 he was at Perry’s guesthouse for drinks, and that Perry later climbed into bed with him and began rubbing his leg. On a separate occasion after his character survived an on-screen shooting, Dixon said Perry invited him for drinks in a trailer and asked if he was attracted to him; Dixon says he told Perry he was not interested and that the encounter then became physical when Perry pushed him against a wall and grabbed his buttocks.
Dixon also alleged an incident in June 2021 at Perry’s Atlanta home in which Perry, he says, prepared several alcoholic drinks for himself, demanded to know why Dixon "was not having sex with anyone," and later led Dixon to a guesthouse bathroom to show a weight monitor before reaching down, pulling at Dixon’s underwear and grabbing him. Dixon said he tried to resist and eventually ended contact in the spring of 2024. He left The Oval in September 2024 and said a series he had been developing, Losing It — rights to which he said Perry owned — never advanced beyond a pilot.
Dixon said he filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in January and that his broader aim is to change workplace behavior. "It would look like thinking I've made a change and that something like this won't happen to another actor that works for him or another actor in the industry. That would be justice for me," he said.
Perry has denied the allegations. In a statement to ABC News, Perry’s lawyer Matthew Boyd called Dixon "an individual who got close to Tyler Perry for what now appears to be nothing more than setting up a scam," and said, "Tyler will not be shaken down and we are confident these fabricated claims of harassment will fail." A request for comment to Perry’s representatives had not been returned to the Daily Mail, which first reported on the interview.
The lawsuit and Dixon’s television interview add to a string of high-profile allegations against prominent figures in the entertainment industry and raise questions about workplace conduct on productions. Dixon said pursuing legal action was difficult but necessary, and he urged that the industry not use "someone's dream to coerce them into a relationship that's not professional." The case is pending, and neither side has presented evidence in court that was reviewed for this report.