Russell Brand is opening up about his brief marriage to pop star Katy Perry.
“I didn’t handle that marriage very well,” the comedian-turned-podcaster, 50, said during a Wednesday, April 22, appearance on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Show.
Brand and Perry, 41, tied the knot in October 2010, however, he filed for divorce just over a year later in December 2011. Their divorce was finalized in July 2012.
In his Wednesday interview with political commentator Megyn Kelly, Brand said that he entered the marriage feeling unfulfilled in his own life and thought being wed to Perry would help his self-esteem.
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“When you fall in love with someone, like, isn’t it amazing to be in love? Well, imagine that compounded with everyone else acting like it’s important,” he explained. “Plus, she’s a really lovely … You know what there is about her? She has an innocence. She’s a very beautiful person. She’s also incredibly driven and worked really, really hard. I saw her working really hard.”
Brand continued, “Here’s me taking total responsibility for all the mistakes I made in that marriage. I wanted to grab her like this kind of, ‘There, got it.’ I felt like I was inadequate and not enough on my own, so I saw [her as] this big, glorious thing, even though I knew her as a person, just a normal person. Who’s famous when it comes to shower time, picking your nose, scratching your ass? Everybody breaks down into mundanity and flesh.”
“But she was really, really, really lovely,” he said. “It was my fault. I pushed to get married early because I felt inadequate and insecure and that I wasn’t enough and that if I was married to her, I’d somehow be a better person and more important.”
According to Brand, he realizes now that his expectations of the marriage put the “Roar” singer under an “unnecessary amount of pressure and strain.”
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Perry was a “very young woman” at the time, he said, adding, “She couldn’t fulfill those obligations. She was pursuing her dream, which she successfully did, of becoming the world’s most famous pop star.”
“When she was doing that, I was in a crisis of, ‘Hold on a minute, I’m lonely and this isn’t working,’” Brand said.
At the time, the comedian said he thought, “You’ve married a pop star, come on,” but continued to question why the relationship wasn’t working.
Brand said that the marriage not working out was for the best because he was “fated to marry my incredible wife,” referring to his spouse, Laura Gallacher, whom he wed in 2017.
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Brand told Kelly that it’s “true” he hasn’t spoken to Perry since he said he wanted a divorce but remains in touch with her parents.
“I stay in touch with her father, Keith, and her mother, Mary, ‘cause they’re good Christian folks,” he said, adding that he feels a “good deal of sympathy” for Perry amid Ruby Rose’s recent sexual assault allegations against her. (Perry has denied Rose’s claims.)
