First Opinions

Katy Perry opens up about Russel Brand and life before Superstardom

    In a recent cover story she did with The Hollywood Reporter, megastar Katy Perry finally opens up about the demise of her relationship with British comedian, Russel Brand, and her struggle to capture it onscreen for her new movie, Katy Perry: Part of Me, due out July 5th of this year.

    “What was going on in my personal life was so overwhelming that I had to bend over and let those tears fall straight out of my eye sockets and not my false lashes just as I’m about to go up on that ramp and sing Teenage Dream,” she remembers. “I had to smack myself across the face and say, ‘These problems are my problems, they are not my audience’s problems. Learn to separate that.”

    Most of us, when we look at Katy Perry, only see a doe-eyed, filthy rich pop princess with the feel good megahits and lollipops stuck in her hair. But Part of Me promises to show that there is so much more to the star. Not unlike Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never, the movie sends out an underlying message of having faith and believing in yourself. Perry says the film will be honest and from the heart, “like how I write my songs”. She continues, somewhat bluntly stating, “Honesty has always worked for me. So if it ain’t broke, why f—ing fix it?”

    And honest she will be. Part of Me was filmed during a kind of topsy-turvy point in her life. On one hand, she was rising to superstardom faster than she could take a breath, and on the other, her whirlwind love story was crumbling in front of her eyes. Perry admits that two years ago, she “wouldn’t feel comfortable with people seeing me crying or looking like a hot mess.”  

    As well as showing the gritty underbelly of her love life at the time, Part of Me will tell the story of a young Katy (birth name Katheryn Hudson),  struggling to break out of a sheltered ultra-religious upbringing to follow her passion in music. One might wonder how she managed to bite her lip and pull through when she’d seen firsthand countless times the truth about how hard it is to ‘make it’.

    But as Perry did to convince her “frugal business manager”, Berni Gudvi, that making Part of Me was the right decision for her, she repeated her lifelong mantra to anyone who doubted her abilities to succeed; “Trust me. I have a vision.”

Check out her new Wide Awake music video here