When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle decided to step away from the royal family in 2020, Tyler Perry was quick to offer his home, even though he had never met the couple before.
“I sent them a note … and just said, ‘If you ever need anything, I’m here,’ and she called months later and just talked to me like I was a therapist you talk to and we just had a great conversation,” the filmmaker, 54, told host Kelly Ripa on the Wednesday, November 15, episode of her “Let’s Talk Off Camera” podcast.
Perry added that he wanted to assist Harry and Meghan during a difficult time as they made a transition to living in the United States.
“It is very important for people in this business to have a safe place to land, to have a place where they can trust and talk freely and get advice that’s not going to be biased or from somebody who wants something from them,” he added.
Perry sent his letter before the couple married in 2018. Two years later, the royals announced that they were stepping back as members of the royal family and would balance their time between the United Kingdom and North America.
In May 2020, the Madea creator welcomed the couple and their son, Prince Archie, now 4, to his $18 million mansion in Beverly Hills.
“They hid out at my house for a long time. It was so great,” he recalled. “They were so happy. It was such a beautiful moment,”
After six weeks at his home, in August 2020, Harry and Meghan announced they had bought a $14 million estate in Montecito, California.
When their daughter, Princess Lilibet, was born in June 2021, they named Perry her godfather.
Perry told Ripa that he calls his royal goddaughter “Little Lili.”
“Oh, she’s so beautiful. She’s just so beautiful,” he gushed. “They make beautiful babies — that’s all I’ll say. They make some beautiful kids. Archie and Lili are beautiful.”
Meghan previously discussed how she and Harry developed their friendship with Perry during the Netflix docuseries, Harry & Meghan.
She said she was “a wreck” after she and Harry had left the royal family and were temporarily living in Canada: “I was just crying and crying.”
When she called Perry, she said their call was therapeutic.
“Sometimes it’s easier to open up to someone who knows nothing at all, and that was that moment with me and Tyler,” she commented.
In the docuseries, Perry recalled the phone call which was the first time he spoke to Meghan .
“I could hear the fear, it was palpable,” he said, and remembered she feared the paparazzi.
“She was afraid of them destroying her,” Perry explained, adding: “I saw my mother being abused for years, I know the symptoms … This woman was abused, and so was [Harry].”
