Russell Brand still has a special place in his heart for ex-wife Katy Perry. The comedian, 41, reflected on his short-lived marriage to the pop star, 32, in an interview for the W Channel’s John Bishop: In Conversation With on Thursday, March 30.
Noting that Perry was “obviously very, very occupied and very busy” and that he was “occupied and busy [though] not to the same degree,” Brand said it was difficult to safeguard their relationship from “external influences.”
“There’s the declaration that we are together, in front of people. There was a ceremony, people are invited — that is the point of a wedding ceremony — but in the end there is a kind of intimacy where you acknowledge it’s just the two of us,” he explained. “And I suppose perhaps we intuitively or explicitly, I don’t know, understood that we’d better protect this thing.”
Unfortunately for their marriage, the pressures of fame ultimately took a toll. “Now, like, obviously the marriage didn’t last for a very long time, and I think that is to do with the undulated nature of fame and that living in those conditions and what was happening,” Brand continued.
The “Rise” performer and the Forgetting Sarah Marshall actor split in 2012 after just 14 months of marriage. Perry later told Vogue that Brand broke up with her by text message.
Despite the circumstances of their divorce, Brand (who is now dating and has a child with Laura Gallacher) speaks fondly of his ex. “I have come away from that experience feeling — I still feel very warm towards her,” he told Bishop. “I feel like, when I hear about her or see her, ‘Aw, there’s that person. There’s that person in the world.'”
Perry, for her part, has been very open about her heartbreak after the end of their marriage. “I was in bed for about two weeks,” she told the U.K.’s Sunday Times in 2013. “I was pretty f–ked, yes. It hurt a lot — I got a good knock. … I had to face the reality that things are not always on cloud nine.”
