When the Duke and Duchess of Sussex landed in California in 2020, recently freed from their royal obligations and desperately seeking a place to stay, they found an $18 million home courtesy of a billionaire they hardly knew.

African-American media mogul Tyler Perry took compassion on the weary travelers and offered them access to a massive 25,000 sq ft mansion he owned but rarely used in Beverly Ridge, one of Los Angeles’s most exclusive gated neighborhoods.

Perry reportedly waived the rent and even sent his private jet to transport the Sussexes from British Columbia to their new residence, including the services of his security team to ensure the close protection they highly valued.

‘I’d never met him before,’ the duchess said in the couple’s 2022 Netflix documentary, Harry & Meghan. ‘I was a wreck. I was just crying and crying. Sometimes it’s easier to open up to someone who knows nothing at all, and that was that moment with me and Tyler.’

In return for his generosity in facilitating their so-called ‘freedom flight’, in 2021 Perry was named godfather to their beloved daughter, Lilibet.

Grand gestures seem to come naturally to the 55-year-old film-maker, playwright and actor. Eight years earlier, he’d donated his plane to fly the body of singer Whitney Houston back to her New Jersey home after she was found dead in a Los Angeles hotel bath.

Now, however, it is Perry who could do with some urgent assistance. One of the most powerful black figures in Hollywood, he is being sued for $260 million (£193 million) in a lawsuit accusing him of sexual assault, battery, sexual harassment and intentional infliction of emotional distress by a young male actor who starred in The Oval, one of Perry’s hit TV series.

The 46-page complaint, which has been seen by the Mail, paints a disturbingly different picture of Perry from the man lionised at the 2021 Oscars – when he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to a standing ovation. The lawsuit alleges that Perry, who likes to portray himself as a God-fearing protector and ally of the vulnerable, subjected actor Derek Dixon, to ‘escalating’ abuse and violence over several years.

Perry, he claims, ‘held direct control over his employment, compensation, and creative opportunities’, and Dixon faced retaliation when he did not respond favourably to his sleazy and unwanted advances.

‘Mr Perry took his success and power and used his considerable influence in the entertainment industry to create a coercive, sexually exploitative dynamic with Mr Dixon – initially promising him career advancement and creative opportunities, such as producing his pilot and casting him in his show, only to subject him to escalating sexual harassment, assault and battery, and professional retaliation,’ says the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Perry denies the charges and his lawyers dismissed the lawsuit as a ‘scam’ engineered by an individual who got close to their client, adding: ‘Tyler will not be shaken down and we are confident these fabricated claims of harassment will fail.’

However, the lawsuit contains a string of alleged screenshots of ‘flirtatious’ text messages sent to Dixon by Perry, who has a ten-year-old son by a former girlfriend. In one, he apparently asks: ‘What’s it going to take for you to have guiltless sex?’ In another, he tells his accuser: ‘I hope that you would let some one [sic] hold you and make love to you. You are missing the best years of your life my friend.’

The lawsuit alleges that Perry has ‘a troubling pattern of exploiting vulnerable male actors and employees’ and that, like ‘Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, R. Kelly, Sean “P-Diddy” Combs… Mr Perry’s success has led him to believe that money and influence can get him whatever he wants.

‘Tyler Perry has been using his power and influence to molest, abuse and sexually assault impressionable and vulnerable employees and actors who look to him for guidance and mentorship.’

Dixon claims he was so desperate to get away from Perry that he gave up his $400,000 acting contact for The Oval, which is about a US President’s abusive relationship with his First Lady and, as a result of Perry’s alleged assaults, was left with ‘severe depression, anxiety, stomach pains, and nausea’ and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Perry, who is worth an estimated $1.4 billion (£1 billion), built his Hollywood empire through playing a gun-toting, no-nonsense African-American matriarch named Madea – he’s dressed in drag for the role – in a lucrative string of films and TV shows.

But he has often spoken about his traumatic upbringing in New Orleans – a ‘living hell’ during which he says he was regularly beaten by the man he wrongly believed to be his father.

In interviews with Oprah Winfrey, a mutual friend of the Sussexes, he revealed that from the age of five or six he was sexually abused by three different men, as well as by the mother of a friend. He later wrote a play about himself and the ‘shame’ he felt.

‘The most difficult part of it was understanding the far-reaching tentacles of all the abuse and how far it can reach into your life, into your relationships, into who you love and to how you love,’ he told an interviewer last December.

Perry describes himself as a devout Christian. In 2018 he told the congregation of an evangelical Texas megachurch that he was once a minister and went to a seminary. He reportedly met Gelila Bekele, an Ethiopian-born model and documentary maker, the mother of his son, at a Prince concert in 2007. The couple never married and, in 2020, Perry announced their separation, writing on Instagram: ‘I’m 51, single and wondering what the next chapter in my life will look like.’

Dixon says he met Perry in September 2019 when he was an aspiring actor working for an event company – owned by a close friend of Perry – hired to plan the opening party for the 330-acre Tyler Perry Studios, in Atlanta, Georgia. According to the lawsuit, the two men exchanged phone numbers and, at the end of the party, Perry told him he might have an acting role for him.

Perry soon got in touch, telling Dixon to do an audition over the phone and suggesting he needed a ‘sugar daddy’. Perry gave him a small role in one of his TV series, Ruthless, which he said had the possibility to get bigger.

Dixon claims that in January 2020, he was invited to Perry’s mansion in Douglasville County, Georgia (he also has a home in Wyoming and a private island in the Bahamas). Dixon said he accepted, hoping their friendship would lead to more acting work.

However, according to the lawsuit, he drank too much and ended up – at Perry’s insistence staying in his guest room.

He claims in the lawsuit that 6ft5in Perry then got into bed with him and started rubbing his thighs, at which point Dixon jumped out and insisted he was ‘not into sex’. Although he says he rejected Perry’s advances that night, the mogul remained interested in him and even bought him a new car.

Perry then cast Dixon in long-running drama series The Oval. Dixon’s role as Dale, a gay and homeless shop assistant who had to sleep with people to get a roof over his head, felt disturbingly close to real life, he claims. And, he says, that’s exactly the type of man Perry told him he was looking for – someone loyal and dependent on him.

Dixon accepted the role but says he felt increasingly trapped – financially reliant on Perry, whom he claims became more assertive in his demands for sex.

The lawsuit describes how Perry – who also invited Dixon to stay on his Bahamas island – relentlessly pursued the much younger Dixon, sending him a stream of sexually suggestive and often salacious messages.

The lawsuit accuses Perry of dangling acting opportunities as leverage, with veiled threats about ‘killing off’ characters in his TV shows if the actors playing them offended him.

Dixon alleges that Perry told him his character in The Oval would be shot at the end of the first series – but he hadn’t yet decided whether he would survive.

He interpreted this as ‘a way for Perry to test [him] out for a year’ and that if he ‘failed to engage with the sexual innuendos, Dixon’s character would “die” in the next season’.

According to the lawsuit, Perry was explicit about his motivations: ‘No straight man would be going on walks with you or cooking dinner for you unless they wanted to f*** you. I would f*** you.’

As Dixon continued to resist his advances, Perry’s behaviour escalated into sexual assault, it’s claimed. On one occasion, he allegedly grabbed Dixon by the throat, saying: ‘Look how excited you just got.’

Dixon says he stayed at the Georgia mansion again in June 2021, and was wearing only his underwear when Perry came to give him a goodnight ‘hug’.Instead, Perry yanked down his underwear, groped his behind and said, ‘Relax and just let it happen’, assuring him it wasn’t going to hurt. Dixon says he locked himself in a bathroom for the night, fearing that he was going to be raped ‘by a large, drunk, and sexually frustrated man’.

Dixon alleges Perry attempted to keep him quiet, ramping up his salary for The Oval, offering him a job as a writer and praise for a screenplay Dixon had produced.

‘Perry was only interested in preventing Dixon from exposing the dark side of Tyler Perry,’ the lawsuit claims. ‘[He] only cared that people still view him as the victim he once was, even now as he took shape as the victimiser.’

Dixon says he finally lodged a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in June 2024, and then left The Oval, saying he could no longer put up with the alleged sexual harassment. His claims echo those made by actor and model Christian Keyes in 2023, who has appeared in various Tyler Perry films, the lawsuit claims. Keyes stated publicly in 2023 that he was sexually harassed by a ‘black Hollywood billionaire’ but did not name the person. Dixon claims the unnamed predator was Perry.

‘Dixon heard Mr Keyes’ account and saw that Perry had been engaging in the same sexual conduct as other actors,’ says the lawsuit. ‘Just like the interactions described by Keyes, Perry would get drunk, climb into Dixon’s bed, and start fondling Dixon’s buttocks. Dixon wanted to share his experiences with the media to prevent other actors from being abused at the hands of Perry.’

Perry isn’t the only entertainment mogul to be fighting sexual misconduct accusations. However, unlike others, he has enjoyed a glowing reputation as a pillar of America’s black establishment.

As actress Viola Davis told the Oscars audience when he accepted his 2021 humanitarianism award: ‘Tyler Perry personifies empathy. Tyler knows what it is to be hungry, to be without a home, to feel unsafe and uncertain. So when he buys groceries for 1,000 of his neighbours, supports a women’s shelter, or quietly pays tuition for a hard-working student, Tyler is coming from a place of shared experience.’

Critics, however, have countered that for all the woke aura hanging around Perry – who claims that he stands against ‘all types of hatred’ – he actually perpetuates demeaning racial stereotypes in his on-screen output.

Iconic black film-maker Spike Lee has dismissed Perry’s films as ‘coonery and buffoonery’.

Curiously, despite being so keenly sensitive to racism herself, the Duchess of Sussex has only rhapsodised about Perry.

She has revealed that, despite not knowing them, Perry sent them a note through their mutual publicist before the Sussexes’ 2018 wedding. He said he understood the pressure they were under, that he was praying for them and to contact him if they ever needed help. After they fled the UK to Canada in late 2019, the duchess said she contacted Perry and opened her heart to him.

Perry later said Meghan called and ‘talked to me like I was a therapist’ before he offered them his LA home. ‘They hid out at my house for a long time. It was so great.’

In 2022, he posted a birthday message on X to the duchess, saying: ‘I’ve had a front row seat in your life for the past few years. I’ve watched you endure things that would have broken a lot of people. I’m so incredibly proud to see how happy you, your husband and your kids are now.’

They are still close. Meghan joined Perry on the red carpet last December for another starry Hollywood awards gala at which he was being honoured.

The Sussexes have yet to respond to the allegations against their friend. But, as Meghan’s ostracised father Thomas Markle might attest, even the closest relationships can be tested when the Sussexes’ reputations are at stake.