Larry the Cable Guy enjoyed working on Tyler Perry film

Withtheir characteristic blend of family values, Christian mores, romance and slapstick humor, Tyler Perry movies have become a quiet box-office force.

Best-known for Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005), Why Did I Get Married? (2007) and Madea’s Witness Protection (2012), Perry — according to Forbes magazine — is one of the highest-paid people in the entertainment industry.

Aside from writing, producing and directing 15 movies, a few TV series and a dozen-plus plays, Perry stars in his films as a matriarch, Madea, with a nurturing-yet-vindictive personality.

On Friday, Perry’s latest comedy, A Madea Christmas, will hit theaters nationwide. Among the cast is veteran stand-up comic, actor and TV host Daniel Lawrence Whitney, better-known as Larry the Cable Guy.

“He knows what he’s doing,” Whitney says.

Perry’s films, usually romantic comedies with African-American casts, have a loyal and supportive audience. Madea Goes to Jail (2009), for example, grossed more than $90 million domestically. As his box-office clout has soared, so has his ability to attract talent: Angela Bassett, Kathy Bates, Jennifer Hudson, Janet Jackson and Eugene Levy have all been seen in recent Perry films.

Besides Larry the Cable Guy, A Madea Christmas features Kathy Najimy, who was in Sister Act (1992) and Showtime’s The Big C. She and Whitney play Kim and Bud, a middle-aged blue-collar couple whose son, Connor (Eric Lively), is married to Lacey (Tika Sumpter), the daughter of Madea’s niece, Eileen (Anna Maria Horsford). For the Christmas holidays, Madea and Eileen stage a surprise visit to Lacey, who lives in the country.

Larry the Cable Guy is the “regular joe” character that Whitney has developed over 30 years. Bud, his character in A Madea Christmas, is a close cousin to Larry. Both speak with Southern accents, sport ball caps and aren’t afraid to say what is on their minds, regardless of context.

For Whitney, the message of the film is one of fairness.

“Treat everybody equally,” he says. “They’re all human beings, and, if you treated each other like you’d want to be treated, it’d be a much better world.”

A fair amount of the film’s dialogue was improvised, Whitney says.

“Tyler likes to ad-lib a lot,” he says. “I’d never worked with him before, so I didn’t know that he’d allow you to go off the cuff that much. But on the very first day of filming, I learned fast that ‘Hey, man, this guy doesn’t care if you throw out lines, as long as you stay close to the script.’ That was the fun thing about shooting with Tyler.”

Improvisation comes naturally to Whitney.

“I’m a stand-up,” he says. “When you’re on a roll, you say stuff all the time — but you have to know your audience. So, when I am ad-libbing onstage, I’m not going to do something that the crowd can’t handle. It’s the same with a movie.”