Already the home of the first-ever Camp Quarantine, the hugely successful production “bubble” dreamt up by Perry and his TPS team early this past summer, now those who work at the expansive campus of Tyler Perry Studios don’t have to travel far to be vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus.

This past weekend Perry set up a vaccination site at the studio and worked with Atlanta based Grady Hospital to staff the event. The vaccines were open to crew, staff, their family and friends, and were purely on a voluntary basis.

“There’s still a lot of vaccine hesitancy out there,” says Perry, noting that 55 percent of his crew agreed to get vaccinated. “It’s my hope that people will just get out and get the vaccine, and know that I have it and other members of my staff have it and we’ve [had] no issues, no problems.”

Over 250 people received the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine and hospital staff will return in three weeks to administer the second shot. Steve Mensch, President and GM of Studio Operations, spoke to the sense of security the initiative offered on the lot. “With the studio now operating at 100% capacity, the importance of providing access to the vaccine for our team and the safety it provides for colleagues and clients cannot be understated.”

It’s one of the few, and perhaps the first, example of a producer organizing and putting in-place the distribution of vaccinations for crew and family. Most studios have stayed away from leading the effort in the push for vaccinating staff. For Perry it’s simply one more step in providing a safe place to come to work and create, everyday.

Michelle Sneed, President of Production and Development at TPS, commented on the future of operations at the studios. “We’ve worked tirelessly to wrap the studio in the security blanket the ‘bubble’ produced. Now, by providing more access to the vaccine and continuing with a robust testing protocol, we feel confident that we will continue to foster a production environment that can thrive.”