Not All Secret Service Agents Have Been Inside the White House. Some Trained in a Replica on Tyler Perry’s Set

Despite what many may assume, there are a handful Secret Service agents who have never set foot inside the White House — and some have been trained on its layout by visiting a White House replica at filmmaker Tyler Perry's studios.

While discussing the Secret Service's recent challenges on a recent episode of The Daily podcast, New York Times investigative reporter Eric Lipton spoke about the myriad problems plaguing the federal law enforcement agency, including their resources and training capabilities.

“Homeland Security is a giant agency … and the Secret Service became sort of an afterthought and as a result, it was unable to effectively compete for the money that it needed to equip and train its new hires,” Lipton said.

Elaborating on the issues, Lipton stated that the current training facilities are in dire need of upgrades and should “simply be demolished.”

“Perhaps the biggest area that it’s impacted is Secret Service training. The training facility that they have in suburban Maryland, outside of Washington, is in pretty bad shape,” he said.

“And when it comes to how to defend and protect the White House, they don’t even have a mock White House that they can train around. Even though they’ve been talking about building one for over a decade,” Lipton continued.

Lipton then revealed how filmmaker Tyler Perry came into play, courtesy of the mock White House he had built at his Atlanta movie studios.

Based on direct information he received from the Homeland Security secretary, Lipton claimed that “some of the uniformed officers have never been inside the White House.”

“The Secret Service is so short of proper training facilities that they actually sent, on several occasions, their personnel down to the Atlanta area to train at a mock White House that Tyler Perry, the Hollywood producer, had built as a stage in Georgia. It’s hard to believe, but that’s what the Secret Service has been left with as its options for training its people,” Lipton said.

Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesperson for the Secret Service, offered PEOPLE more context on how Perry became involved with agents' training.

"Following a series of security issues at the White House in 2014, an independent protective mission panel recommended that the U.S. Secret Service construct a replica White House to facilitate scenario-based training under real-world conditions," he said, noting that the Secret Service can't often conduct training at the actual White House because it's used as a secure office, museum and residence.

He continued: "In 2023, former Director Kimberly Cheatle collaborated with Mr. Tyler Perry and his staff to study the White House replica used for filming in Atlanta. We also conducted a scenario-based training exercise at that facility to assess how a similar model could be utilized in Maryland for training future special agents, officers and partner agencies from D.C., Maryland and Virginia who would respond to a potential emergency or critical incident."

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Guglielmi said that in the past year, the Secret Service has worked with Congress and the DHS to make progress on planning the construction of an eventual White House Defense Training Facility.

"We are grateful for Congress’ initial investments, which were crucial in getting this important project off the ground," he said.