The new Tyler Perry movie on Netflix, Straw, is a tense, emotional thriller that takes over the course of one very bad day for protagonist Janiyah Wiltkinson.
Played by Oscar-nominated actor Taraji P. Henson, Janiyah is a struggling single mother who works two jobs, is late on her, and can’t afford to put food on the table for little girl, Aria. Aria suffers from seizures, and the medical bills have cleaned Janiyah out. After losing her job and getting evicted, Janiyah finally reaches her breaking point. (Or her final straw, you might say.)
“She’s a woman who doesn’t feel seen,” Henson said of her character in a recent interview with Decider. ” She doesn’t speak out for herself. But she finds herself in these horrible situations, and one thing leads to another situation that’s much worse than the first situation. As humans, we all have a breaking point. You will break if you don’t have a support system. It’s unfortunate that she had to go through all of this, in one day, to finally be seen.”
An alternate title for this film could be Janiyah’s No Good, Very Bad Day. But audiences can take some comfort in knowing that Straw is not based on real events or people.
The Tyler Perry Straw movie is not based on a true story. It is an original, fictional movie that is not based on real-life events. The character played by Taraji P. Henson, Janiyah Wiltkinson, is not based on a real person. There is no Janiyah Wiltkinson in real life. She is a made-up character invented for a movie that is not based on real events.
The character played by Taraji P. Henson in Straw, Janiyah Wiltkinson, is not based on a real person. She is a fictional character invented by Tyler Perry.
In an interview with Sherri Shepherd (who also stars in the movie as the bank manager) writer/director Tyler Perry said he came up with the idea for her character while listening to the song 2001 song “20 Dollars” by Angie Stone. In that song, Stone describes a woman desperately asking her community to borrow $20, so that she can buy food for herself and her baby.
“I was listening to Angie Stone’s ’20 Dollars,’ and I started writing this movie for women, and for people, who just go through this stuff all the time,” Perry told Shepherd. “All the time, all the time, all the time—it never lets up, never lets up, never lets up. Once you hit that final straw, all hell breaks loose.”
In a different interview with The Risky Unique Lee, Perry also said he was inspired in part by his own life while writing the film. “From my own life, when I was writing it, I was just dealing with so much stuff. I just wanted to get it all on paper. That’s why Janiyah deals with so much stuff. The way it all unfolds—there are many people dealing with this on this planet.”
In other words, Perry wrote the Janiyah Wiltkinson character as a tribute to the many poor, working class people—and especially poor single Black mothers—who struggle to put food on the table for their families. But Janiyah Wiltkinson is not based on a real person.
There are a few news stories in the last two decades about mothers who robbed banks, including a bank manager who was forced to rob a bank in 2000 after she and her daughter were kidnapped, and a single mother from Oregon who robbed a bank to pay her rent in 2010. However, neither of these stories appear to have inspired Straw. That’s the magic of Hollywood—you can just make stuff up!