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There is a scene from the documentary of Katy Perry’s 2012 tour Part of me it’s unforgettable for anyone who sees it – for all the wrong reasons. A pink-haired Perry, buoyed by the success of her multi-platinum album Teenage dream and having to perform in front of thousands of screaming fans that night, he lies in a chair, crying. Moments before, she had received a text from Russell Brand, her husband of a little over a year; in the message, he told her that their marriage was over.
“You can cancel the show, or you can do your best,” a member of Perry’s team told him, shaking his hand. She chooses the latter option, but there’s a horrible dissonance between her cartoonish performance gear — a dress with a bodice adorned with swirling candy — and her obvious grief. Before going on stage through a trapdoor, we see her arrange her face into a perfect popstar smile, but the happiness doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
It’s always been a heartbreaking moment, a reminder of how stratospheric fame can’t protect you from the anguish of a relationship breaking up — especially when that relationship ends so abruptly. But in light of Brand’s conviction for one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault, charges dating back to the height of the comedian’s fame in the 2000s, disturbing details of his relationship with Perry are under new scrutiny. He has now been sentenced to 10 and a half years in prison.The Independent has contacted Perry’s representatives for further comment.
Over the weekend, disturbing images of the couple arriving at Vanity Fair Oscar night in 2010 circulated online, suggesting an uncomfortable dynamic between the two men, who had only been dating for a few months at the time.
In the clip, a journalist from the ITV morning show GMTV asks Perry what she thinks of the Oscars, only for Brand to raise his arm and tap a badge that says “Obey.” Perry then falls silent, and it is Brand’s opinions that the journalist ends up hearing.
Prosecutors initially attempted to make references to Perry when opening their case, in the context of the rape trial, but those references were removed after submissions from his legal team. The Crown Prosecution Service also confirmed that Perry, who is now in a relationship with former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, was not invited to give evidence at the inquest into her former husband, who has been married to author Laura Gallacher, the mother of his three children, since 2017.
But even though Perry hasn’t spoken publicly about her marriage in many years – apart from an allusion to Brand during a performance at the Blenheim Festival earlier this year, when she told the crowd: “I hope my ex isn’t here. He should be in jail” – her interviews in the aftermath of the breakup speak volumes about a possible dark side to a relationship where respective levels of fame have quickly diverged, like a twisted version of A star is born.
Perry and Brand’s paths first crossed in the summer of 2009, when the singer recorded an appearance on Take it to Greekthe sequel to the hit comedy Forget Sarah Marshall. The film was the high point of Brand’s success in Hollywood, ushering in the brief period when he was considered a leading man across the Atlantic. A few months later, they would meet again at the MTV Video Music Awards, when Brand hosted and Perry performed. She threw a half-full water bottle at his head to get his attention, “like Cupid in a riot,” Brand later recalled.
He was 10 years older than her; Perry, riding high on the success of “I Kissed a Girl” and “Hot N Cold,” was still the biggest star, but had not yet reached the stratospheric levels of fame that would soon arrive. She was seduced by the chatty, talkative Brit, whom she described – perhaps unintentionally ominously – as “Oscar Wilde meets Dudley Moore meets Jim Morrison meets a little Elvis Presley meets Charles Manson.” The relationship, she later said, was “like a tornado.”
In October 2010, the couple married in a Hindu ceremony at a tiger sanctuary in Rajasthan, India, attended by famous friends including David Walliams and Jonathan Ross. But shortly after the celebrations, the public got an inadvertent glimpse of the couple’s strange dynamic when Brand posted a photo of his wife, makeup-free and seemingly barely awake, on Twitter to his nearly two million followers. Following a backlash, he quickly deleted the photo – just 48 minutes after sharing it.
At the time, Perry presented it as a joke. “He thought it was hilarious, but as you can imagine, I wasn’t very impressed,” she said, adding that she was “currently planning her revenge.” But more than a decade and a half later, the incident can’t help but seem like a betrayal of trust at best, a ritual of humiliation at worst.
An incognito assistant at his comedy gigs, Perry was also surprised to hear her husband refer to her in his stand-up routine. “He was hysterical in some ways,” she would later say. Vogue. “Until he started making jokes about me and he didn’t know I was in the audience, because I had come to surprise him at one of his shows. So. Hysterical to a certain extent.”
Perry’s album release Teenage dream in 2010, with her ubiquitous string of singles “California Gurls,” “Teenage Dream” and “Firework,” would supercharge her career, making her one of the biggest pop stars on the planet. Meanwhile, the release of Brand’s film Arthursupposed to be his star vehicle, was a failure.
He didn’t like the atmosphere where I’m the boss on tour. So it was really hurtful, and it was very controlling, which was upsetting.
Katy Perry
This disparity, it seems, irritated Brand, who apparently wanted his wife, who had just embarked on a major world tour, to settle down and start a family. “He just couldn’t stand her star eclipsing hers – he made fun of her and was mean behind her back,” a source said. The times during the weekend. In her Part of me In the film, Perry admits that she is “fighting to keep my marriage alive,” while Brand refuses to fly to visit her.
And then came the text message that ended things, landing on Perry’s phone in the winter of 2011, moments before he arrived on stage; the timing was surely not lost on the sender. “I think a lot of times strong men want an equal, but then they get that equal and they’re like, ‘I can’t handle equality,'” she said. Vogue in 2013, after the dust had settled on their divorce, formalized in July 2012 after an amicable agreement in February. “He didn’t like the atmosphere where I was the boss on tour. So it was really hurtful, and it was very controlling, which was upsetting.” The couple reportedly did not have a prenuptial agreement, meaning Brand was entitled to half of Perry’s income under California law; however, Brand chose not to take any of his money.
In another interview with Marie-Claire, Perry suggested that Brand’s desire for the couple to start a family, when she “knew she wasn’t ready” was “a way of controlling.” “It was beyond me.”
Brand, for his part, later appeared to take responsibility in an interview with US television network Megyn Kelly earlier this year. “It was my fault because I insisted on getting married early because I felt inadequate and insecure, like I wasn’t enough and that if I was married to her I would somehow be a better and more important person,” he said, noting that it “put her under unnecessary pressure and tension.”
Broadcaster Piers Morgan would later recall that Perry apparently had an unusual nickname for Brand, which seems even more sinister from our current perspective. She would call him Rasputin, Morgan claimed, a nod to the manipulative, magnetic and promiscuous monk who wormed his way into the confidences of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra, the last emperor and empress of Russia.
As early as 2013, Perry hinted that she had “discovered the real truth” about Brand and their relationship, “which I can’t necessarily divulge because I keep it locked in my safe for a rainy day.” Now that his trial is over, perhaps that “rainy day” could come sooner than we think.
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