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Though the odds were stacked against Nia Long due to other work obligations when Tyler Perry asked her to take the leading role in his new movie “The Single Moms Club,” Nia says Tyler made taking the job a lot simpler because he’s so easy to work with.

“Tyler called and said, ‘Look, I need you. Can you do this?’ And I was doing a show. I was doing ‘House of Lies’ at the time,” the mother of two told HipHollywood. “I was like, ‘God, I don’t know how I’m going to do this.’ It just seemed impossible.’ He said, ‘Look, we’ll work it out.'”

His willingness to work around her hectic schedule isn’t the only reason why Nia says Tyler is such a joy to work with.

“If you’ve ever worked with Tyler Perry, it’s the most well-oiled machine you ever seen operate. You get there, you’re treated like a queen. You have fresh flowers in your trailer everyday. It is the most unbelievable thing ever. Everybody is on point and when we wrapped that film in 17 days, I left going, ‘Did we just make a movie? Because I don’t know that we just made a movie. Like, what happened?'”

As if that weren’t enough, Nia also revealed that Tyler allowed her 11-year-old son, Massai, to audition for the role of her son in the film.

“My son plays my son in the film,” Nia explained. “Massai plays my boy in the movie. I asked [Tyler], ‘So who’s playing my son in the film?’ And he goes, ‘Well, I don’t know, we’ll probably get a kid local in Atlanta.’ I said, ‘Well, you know my son is the same age as the character.'”

While Tyler was willing to hire Massai without an audition, Nia says that she wanted him to go through the audition process for a host of reasons.

“I said, ‘No, no, no, no. I’m not gonna be looking like a fool if I get him there and he’s terrible. Let’s make him audition.’ I knew in my heart he could do it, but I wanted him to go through the process of earning something and also for him to understand what I do and that we really have to work hard to get what we have.”

After setting little Massai up with her old acting coach, Nia says he auditioned and nailed it.

Watch a clip from Nia’s interview on the next page.

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