Russell Brand on Katy Perry Marriage, Feeling “Inadequate”

As we all know now, this didn’t turn out well.

Russell Brand proposed while they were on holiday in India just a few months after meeting Perry in 2009. They returned to India to marry on Oct. 23, 2010, in a traditional Hindu ceremony in the middle of a tiger park.

By December 2011, Brand had informed Perry via text that he wanted a divorce. Perry shared vulnerable moments in midst of their split in the concert documentary Katy Perry: Part of Me, and in 2013 Prism songs “Ghost” and “By the Grace of God” detailed the pain.

“What can I tell you is, when I was married to Katy Perry, she’s like a­—not entirely normal, because she’s an extraordinary, massive star­—but she’s not weird or off key,” Brand said during an April 2025 episode of his podcast. “And wasn’t involved in anything nefarious, as far as I could tell.”

He continued, “The reasons that a marriage didn’t work are the normal human reasons marriages don’t work, and I have nothing but respect for her.”