Actress Essence Atkins expressed her displeasure with director Tyler Perry for casting Kim Kardashian in his latest flick, Temptation. In an interview with Jamie Foster Brown’s Sister 2 Sister magazine, Atkins, 41, said Perry cast Kardashian in Temptation because she had 16 million Twitter followers (half of which are bogus).
“I found it interesting that Tyler did that with Temptation, hiring Kim Kardashian because she has 16 million Twitter followers, which would seem like a brilliant marketing plan,” she said.
Atkins is one of the rare LSLH actresses who has never been cast in a Tyler Perry flick.
Calling Perry’s casting of Kardashian “an experiment”, Atkins added: “He has one of the biggest Twitter personalities out there in his movies, and he had one of the worst box office weekends. It’s not a failure, but it did worse than his movies usually do just based on him. I thought that was an interesting finding. Your experiment didn’t work.”
Temptation grossed $22 million it’s opening weekend, and $49 million total.
Atkins continued: “People want to see good stories. It’s not necessarily that they want to see Kim Kardashian in a movie. They want to see her in a bikini. They want to see her with Kanye. They want to see her on her show talking about her life with her sisters, but that doesn’t mean that they want to see her in a movie.”
Atkins is an actress best known for her roles on UPN sitcom Half & Half and on the The WB sitcom Smart Guy.
Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images
