Old Katy Perry comments hinted she knew ‘truth’ about Russell Brand

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Katy Perry said in a decade-old interview with Vogue that she knew “the real truth” about her ex-husband, Russell Brand, who has been accused of sexual abuse by four different women.

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In her 2013 chat with Vogue, Perry reflected on her short-lived marriage to the British funnyman, telling the magazine that she felt “responsible” for the dissolution of their union until she “found out the real truth” about Brand.

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“At first when I met him he wanted an equal, and I think a lot of times strong men do want an equal, but then they get that equal and they’re like, ‘I can’t handle the equalness.’ He didn’t like the atmosphere of me being the boss on tour. So that was really hurtful, and it was very controlling, which was upsetting,” Perry said at the time.

“I felt a lot of responsibility for it ending, but 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. I let go and I was like, ‘This isn’t because of me; this is beyond me.’ So I have moved on from that.”

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Brand, 48, has been accused by four different women, including one who was 16 at the time, of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse in incidents that allegedly took place from 2006 and 2013.

The Sunday Times, The Times of London and Channel 4’s Dispatches said that one woman alleged she had been raped, while three others accused him of sexual assault. One of the women also said he had been physically and emotionally abusive.

The women said that they only felt ready to tell their stories after being approached by reporters, with some citing Brand’s newfound prominence as an online wellness influencer as a factor in their decision to speak.

Perry was briefly married to Brand between 2010 and 2012 before he broke up with her via a text she received on Dec. 31, 2011.

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Asked about their split in January 2012, Brand referred to their breakup as “lacquered nonsense.”

“I don’t want to further celebrate the overly elaborate, brittle plastic structures of nonsense that are constantly fired into our minds to distract us from what’s really important,” he said. “So if I’d done something actually newsworthy … then I’d cover it. But if it was just more lacquered nonsense, designed to distract us from truth, then I would wisely ignore it.”

Perry, meanwhile, admitted that her mind went to dark places after the breakdown of her marriage.

The song By the Grace of God from her 2013 album Prism captured a moment in which she felt suicidal after their separation.

“That song is evident of how tough it really was at a certain point. I asked myself, ‘Do I want to endure? Should I continue living?’” she told Billboard at the time.

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Last month, during an appearance on Running Wild With Bear Grylls: The Challenge, Brand called his relationship with Perry a “little bit chaotic.”

“Aside from my, like, sort of feelings of affection for Katy, it’s a time that I remember as being a little bit chaotic and a bit, for me, I’ll speak for myself, a little disconnected,” he said.

Even though his movie career was taking off with roles in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek, he hinted her level of fame was too much for him to handle.

“Some aspects of it were, like, amazing. She’s an amazing person, and it was kind of incredible to live for a moment in that ‘eye of the cyclone’-type aspect of fame.”

Before the allegations against him went public on Saturday, Brand called the alleged encounters “consensual” in a statement posted to his Instagram.

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“I have received two extremely disturbing letters, one from a mainstream media TV company, one from a newspaper, listing a litany of egregious and aggressive attacks. Amidst this litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks, are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute,” he said.

“When I was in the movies, and as I’ve written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous. During that time of promiscuity, the relationships that I had were absolutely always consensual.”

Brand also hinted that the allegations were part of a plot to discredit him because of his skepticism about COVID-19 vaccines and his criticism of the mainstream media.

“To see that transparency metastasized into something criminal, that I absolutely deny, makes me question is there another agenda at play, particularly when we’ve seen coordinated media attacks before, like with Joe Rogan when he dared to take a medicine the media didn’t approve of,” Brand said.

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“Of course. They don’t like competition,” Telsa CEO Elon Musk wrote in support of Brand’s video suggesting the accusations were part of an “agenda.”

“Criticize the drug companies, question the war in Ukraine, and you can be pretty sure this is going to happen,” conservative commentator Tucker Carlson added.

In the wake of the allegations, senior British politicians on Monday urged police to investigate the claims against Brand.

After its published report, the Times said that more women had reached out to the newspaper leveling more charges at Brand and they would be “rigorously checked.”

London’s Metropolitan Police force said it would speak to the Sunday Times and Channel 4 to ensure “any victims of crime who they have spoken with are aware of how they may report any criminal allegations to police.”

— With files from the Associated press

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X: @markhdaniell

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