Volume II of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Netflix docuseries, “Harry & Meghan,” revealed the couple’s daughter Lilibet has a celebrity godfather: Tyler Perry.
In the final episode of the six-part docuseries, which dropped on Thursday, Perry opened up about how his relationship with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, recalling how the pair asked him to be their daughter’s godfather.
“We’ll call and we’ll chat and we’ll talk about silly things, and they were pretty serious on the phone and I go, ‘Okay, what’s going on?'” the 53-year-old actor told the Netflix cameras. “They said, ‘Well, we’d like for you to be Lili’s godfather.’ I go, ‘Whoa.’ I had to take a minute to take that in. And I thought, ‘I’d be honored. I’d be absolutely honored.'”
Perry said he didn’t want to travel to the UK to do a royal christening, and instead suggested they have a “private ceremony” in Los Angeles.
“I got off the phone, took it all in, and then called them back, and I go, ‘Uh, hold on a second — does that mean we gotta go over there and do all of that in the church with [the royal family] and figure that all out, ’cause I don’t wanna do that,” he says. “Maybe we can do a little private ceremony here and let that be that, and if you have to do it there, then that’s okay.”
Prince Harry and Meghan welcomed Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor in June 2021. They are also parents to son Archie, now 3. While the couple had a traditional royal christening at Windsor Castle in July 2019 for Archie, they had already been out of the UK for over a year when Lilibet was born.
Meanwhile, earlier in the episode, Perry revealed how he first became friends with Prince Harry and Meghan, sharing that he first took notice after the latter’s father, Thomas, made headlines for posing for the paparazzi.
“I’m not a royal watcher, I don’t really pay attention to a lot of stuff,” Perry recalled. “But I saw something about her father [posing for the paparazzi]. I found it to be hurtful if he were my father.”
He added, “And I couldn’t even imagine this woman finding the man that she loved, the man of her dreams, and him being a Prince, and then to walk into all of that madness and need the security of family and then have your father do some horrible things.”
The “Madea” star said he “immediately emphasized with her,” and before Prince Harry and Meghan’s wedding in May 2018 he “sent her a note,” letting her know that he was “praying for her just to be able to move through it and hold on.”
“That’s where Tyler came into the picture,” Meghan said. “I had never met him before. He sent me a letter before the wedding just saying he was praying for me. And that if I ever needed anything he would be there.”
The former actress said “months and months and months went by” before she and Perry spoke for the first time. Meghan noted that she reached out to Perry after she and Prince Harry had been living in Vancouver, Canada following their move from the UK.
“One day when we were in Canada, I had called him. Finally, after years at that point. [It was] the first time we ever spoke,” she recalled. “And I was just a wreck, I was crying and crying. Like sometimes it’s easier to just open up to someone who knows nothing at all. And that was that moment with me and Tyler.”
“I could hear the fear [in her voice]. It was palpable. I mean, I could hear it,” Perry said to the camera, adding that he told Meghan that all of her fears were “valid.”
“[Meghan] was afraid of [the royal family] destroying her, or going crazy, or them making her think she was crazy,” he continued, before sharing that he believes Meghan — and Prince Harry — had been “abused” by the royal family.
“I saw my mother be abused for years; I knew the symptoms. I knew what it was like,” the producer said. “Everyone’s like, ‘Tyler, how dare you compare this to the abuse of your mother?’ This woman was abused. And so was he.”
“To use the institution to try and do all the things a batterer would do, like … ‘We’re gonna cut off the money. We’re not gonna leave you security. We’re gonna do all those things to make you comply and come back,” Perry added. “And for the both of them to have the wherewithal to say, ‘I don’t give a damn if it’s the palace. I’m out of here.’ I applauded that.”
In March 2020, after Prince Harry and Meghan’s location in Canada had leaked, Perry offered the couple to say at his Los Angeles home.
“We’d been stuck at this house where everyone in the world knew where we were. Unprotected, no security,” he recalled of their home in Canada.
Prince Harry and Meghan stayed at Perry’s house for six weeks, with the former noting that his family “still thought [he] was in Canada” the entire time.
It was leaked that the two were living at Perry’s home. Prince Harry and Meghan later moved to Montecito in June 2020.
The first three episodes of “Harry & Meghan” — Volume I — were released on December 8, with the second volume and final three episodes dropping a week later on December 15.
The official synopsis for the series, per Netflix, reads:
“In an unprecedented and in-depth documentary series, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex share the other side of their high-profile love story. Across six episodes, the series explores the clandestine days of their early courtship and the challenges that led to them feeling forced to step back from their full-time roles in the institution. With commentary from friends and family, most of whom have never spoken publicly before about what they witnessed, and historians who discuss the state of the British Commonwealth today and the royal family’s relationship with the press, the series does more than illuminate one couple’s love story, it paints a picture of our world and how we treat each other. From the critically-acclaimed, two-time Academy Award-nominated and Emmy-winning director Liz Garbus, Harry & Meghan is a never-before-seen look at one of the most-discussed couples in history.”
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