It was a painful scene captured on camera. Just moments before Katy Perry was due to perform in São Paulo, Brazil, the singer—dressed in a cartoon-style outfit covered with spinning peppermint swirls—received a text from Russell Brand telling her their marriage was over.
The image of Perry collapsing into a chair and crying appears in her 2012 documentary Part Of Me. She later said she deliberately kept her head lowered while sobbing so her false eyelashes would stay in place before she walked onstage to face 40,000 screaming fans.
Perry’s 14-month marriage to Brand, now a convicted sex offender, is regarded in Hollywood as one of the most troubled celebrity unions. The couple were married from October 2010 until New Year’s Eve the following year.
A woman who met Brand through an alcohol-recovery programme and knew him during his relationship with Perry said: ‘Hollywood has no shortage of dysfunctional relationships, but even then Katy and Russell’s marriage was viewed as exceptionally toxic. It ranks alongside Brad and Angelina.’
Now that Perry is reportedly in ‘advanced talks’ with streaming services including Netflix and Hulu about a docuseries on her relationship with Brand—and is said to be considering a revealing memoir—some have asked why she has waited so long to tell her story.
In a 2013 interview with Vogue, Perry admitted that she initially blamed herself for the marriage’s collapse. She then added cryptically: ‘Then I found out the real truth, which I can’t necessarily disclose because I keep it locked in my safe for a rainy day.’
So what is inside that safe?
Last week, it emerged that Brand—sentenced to ten years and six months for rape and sexual assault—is facing fresh allegations of sexual misconduct from at least six more women in Britain and the United States.
Katy Perry and Russell Brand during Paris Fashion Week in October 2009. They had met earlier that year on the set of Brand’s comedy film Get Him To The Greek
By conventional standards, Perry—ten years younger than Brand—seemed an unlikely match. The daughter of two Pentecostal ministers, who later established their own evangelical church, she is pictured with her parents at the 2010 premiere of Get Him To The Greek
One alleged victim said Brand tried to pull her into a lavatory as recently as 2015, when he was in a relationship with Laura Gallacher, his now-wife and the mother of his three children.
Police confirmed that Perry was not questioned under oath or called as a witness at Brand’s trial because the offences for which he was charged occurred between 2004 and 2009, before their marriage.
If further charges are brought in Britain or Los Angeles, Perry could potentially be called to give evidence against the man she nicknamed ‘Rasputin’, after the long-haired, sexually enigmatic ‘holy man’ associated with Russia’s last tsar.
The source from the sobriety group, who knew Brand when he met Perry on the set of Get Him To The Greek in June 2009, said: ‘You have to ask why Katy has never told her story. It has been years since she and Russell separated.
‘She is a strong woman who has made women’s rights a central part of her public image. There is a great deal of speculation in Hollywood about what she has in that safe—and whether it might have protected other women from becoming victims.’
There is no suggestion that Perry did anything wrong. Indeed, several people I spoke to last week said she was in a coercive marriage and should be regarded as another of Brand’s alleged victims. Even so, questions remain about what she knew and when.
The source asked: ‘Did someone approach her during the marriage and say Brand had assaulted them? Did Katy discover something on his phone? Why would she need to put anything away for a rainy day? She is a wealthy woman. It remains a major mystery.’
For some, an even greater mystery is what Perry saw in the talkative, sexually charged comedian in the first place. A man who worked on Get Him To The Greek, filmed at the height of Brand’s Hollywood career when he reportedly earned $5 million per movie, said people were surprised when the pair confirmed they were dating.
Brand’s promiscuity was hardly a secret. His father, Ron, arranged for sex workers to ‘service’ him during a trip to the Far East when Brand was 17.
In Hollywood during the 2000s, there was a joke—which has aged particularly badly—that Brand ‘would hit on anything with a pulse’.
Although he had stopped using cocaine and alcohol in 2002, Brand was frequently seen leaving clubs with glamorous blonde women. At awards ceremonies, he was known to move from table to table chatting up attractive guests.
I recall an incident at the Golden Globes, around the time he was making Arthur, the poorly received remake of the Dudley Moore classic. Brand flirted with the wife of a studio executive and was threatened with removal from the room before talking his way out of the situation.
His behaviour on set was reportedly no different. A crew member who worked on Arthur told the MoS: ‘He behaved inappropriately almost constantly. His manager was warned, “You need to get him under control or he’ll be sued.” The manager replied, “That has already happened.”’
A friend said: ‘Everyone knew Russell was a pig, but nobody suspected he was a rapist. He flirted with every attractive woman, but he was a movie star—famous, wealthy and blessed with what Americans considered a charming English accent. We assumed he attracted women because of that.’
Yet Perry, who is ten years younger than Brand, appeared an unlikely choice by almost any measure. She was raised by Pentecostal ministers who later founded their own evangelical church, in a strict household in Santa Barbara, the affluent coastal community about two hours north of Los Angeles.
Perry has described growing up in a home where people ‘spoke in tongues’. She first pursued music as a gospel singer under her birth name, Katheryn Hudson, before moving into mainstream pop in 2008.
After her breakthrough single I Kissed A Girl was released, I called her mother, who criticised her daughter for singing about such ‘wicked’ behaviour.
The woman who knew Perry through Brand’s sobriety group said: ‘Katy was distinctive. Her religious upbringing was unusual and she seemed somewhat innocent. She was quirky, kind and enormously talented, but she did not appear to be consumed by sex in the way Russell was. We were astonished when they became a couple and assumed it was a classic case of opposites attracting.’
Perry and Brand appear affectionate at a charity gala in 2010. They married later that year, but the union lasted just 14 months and became known in Hollywood as one of the most troubled celebrity marriages
Brand removes his wedding ring in a video recorded in November 2011, one month before he ended the marriage by text message
The couple married after a whirlwind courtship at the Aman-i-Khas resort in Rajasthan’s Ranthambore tiger park in October 2010. Their guest list now makes uncomfortable reading: it included David Walliams and P Diddy—one accused of grooming girls as young as 15, allegations he denies, and the other convicted of sex offences—alongside Noel Gallagher, Rihanna and Jonathan Ross.
By then, Brand had a spiritual adviser, a yogi named Tej Kaur Khalsa, who worked from a fitness studio in an unremarkable strip mall near my Los Angeles home. I approached Tej around the time of the wedding. Wearing flowing white robes, she called Brand a ‘wonderful spiritual man’ but declined to discuss him further, saying: ‘We have a special bond and I would never betray that. He is like a child to me.’
Brand, meanwhile, described Tej as one of the most ‘influential’ people in his life.
At the time, he attended at least two sobriety meetings every day—one at The Log Cabin on Robertson Boulevard and another in an upstairs room at a club off Sunset Boulevard.
After their wedding, Brand and Perry lived in a 5,000 sq ft property in fashionable Los Feliz before buying Park Hill Estate, a spectacular nine-bedroom, 17,000 sq ft home in the Hollywood Hills.
But signs of an unusual dynamic were already visible.
At the 2010 Vanity Fair Oscars party, an ITV reporter asked Perry for her reaction to the evening’s winners. Brand held up a badge reading ‘OBEY’, Perry stopped speaking and Brand took control of the interview.
Not long after the wedding, he uploaded a photograph of his wife in bed, bleary-eyed and without make-up.
The sobriety-group friend said: ‘Katy never appears in public without her “face” on. She is highly professional, and I remember her explaining that she felt obliged to look a certain way in case fans she adored approached her for a photograph.
‘I can only imagine how humiliated she must have felt when Russell posted a picture of her in bed looking awful.’
Perry said at the time: ‘He thought it was funny, but as you can imagine, I was not impressed.’
Perry has also described how the balance of power changed during their 14-month marriage.
When they met, Brand was at the height of his film career. But Arthur flopped, and his conduct had begun to alienate Hollywood studios. One executive said: ‘This was before #MeToo, but Hollywood has always been alert to reputational risks. Brand acquired a reputation as a problem.’
Brand and Perry attend a charity event in December 2011, the month they filed for divorce
Soon after the wedding, Brand shared a photograph of a bleary-eyed, make-up-free Katy Perry in bed. She said: ‘He thought it was hilarious, but as you can imagine, I wasn’t too impressed.’
He continued to dominate expatriate parties in the Hollywood Hills, but his volume and vulgarity eventually began to exhaust people. ‘The word spread, as it always does. He was a liability waiting to cause trouble. People did not turn against him because of allegations that he was molesting women. They turned against him because his films failed and he was unpredictable.’
Perry’s third album, Teenage Dream, arrived in 2010 and produced five global number-one singles, including Firework and California Gurls, featuring Snoop Dogg. The record sold 12 million copies worldwide and topped the charts in both the United States and Britain.
Someone who worked on the album said: ‘It propelled Katy into another stratosphere. We immediately organised a world tour, with a documentary planned to film alongside it.
‘As far as I remember, Russell did not attend a single show.
‘Katy wanted the marriage to succeed. We would have four days between concerts, and she would fly back to Los Angeles to see him before returning to South America, Europe or wherever we were performing—exhausted and dealing with jet lag.’
Perry said: ‘I think strong men often say they want an equal partner, but once they have one they realise, “I can’t cope with this equality.” He did not like the fact that I was the boss on tour. It was deeply hurtful and very controlling, which was upsetting.’
Another associate said Brand wanted to start a family, while Perry—who now has a six-year-old daughter, Daisy, with her former fiancé Orlando Bloom—was not ready.
‘Katy’s career was taking off. Her records were going platinum, while Russell’s career was moving in the opposite direction. It was not the right time for her to have a child,’ the associate said.
Perry therefore set off on her world tour, leaving Brand alone at home in Los Angeles.
Hi, I’m Alex Matthews, Editor of The Crime Desk.
Russell Brand has been convicted of rape and three sexual assaults, while our reporters Caroline Cheetham and Liz Hull attended court throughout the trial. They spoke with Detective Inspector Laura Nelson, who explained why the women featured in the documentary that first brought the allegations to public attention were not involved in the rape trial.
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He ended the marriage by text while Perry was preparing to take the stage in São Paulo—an act described by one person on the tour as ‘the cruellest thing I have ever seen’.
Brand and Perry had no prenuptial agreement. A legal source said: ‘Brand could have claimed half of her tour income. She spent a year of their marriage on the road. To his credit, he did not ask her for any money.’
Perry never spoke to Brand again after he ended the relationship by text. She went on to have a long-term romance with Pirates Of The Caribbean star Orlando Bloom, who she said ‘taught me to trust again’, and is now dating former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau.
Sources claim Trudeau and Perry may already be secretly engaged and could marry next year. ‘They are a wonderful couple. He is completely supportive of her,’ one source said last night. ‘Katy has found her happy ending.’
In July, Perry made her view of Brand’s guilt clear.
While appearing at the Blenheim Festival in Oxfordshire, she was taking part in an interactive game with fans when someone asked how she would react to seeing her former husband.
She immediately replied: ‘I hope my ex isn’t here. He should be in jail.’
As for the evidence Perry may have kept in her safe, only time—and perhaps a Netflix deal—will reveal the truth.