Angela Bassett Joins Perry's "Madea"

Tyler Perry is a strong black woman - when he's cross-dressing as his popular Madea character, that is, in movies like Diary of a Mad Black Woman.

In fact, so successful is he at playing the mouthy matriarch that he may now be the country's most successful drag queen.

Madea may have met her match, however, with the news that the consummately fierce Angela Bassett has been cast in Perry's next comedy, Meet the Browns.

Plot-wise, it's another in Perry's assembly line of plain-folks-who-triumph stories, with Bassett as a single mom who travels from Chicago to Georgia for the funeral of her estranged father. She gets introduced to the wacky titular clan and even finds romance along the way.

Perry will co-star as both Madea and Uncle Joe, in addition to writing and directing.

Audiences will Meet the Browns in early 2008.