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21st September 2023
11:57am BST
Following reports that Russell Brand's ex-wife Katy Perry knew the "truth" about him a decade ago, the singer's nickname for the comedian now accused of sex crimes has been revealed.
In a column for The Sun, Piers Morgan discussed Brand's divorce from the Firework singer. The pair began dating in 2009, before marrying in a lavish ceremony at a tiger sanctuary in India on 23 October, 2010. Just 14 months later, Brand reportedly told the singer he wanted a divorce via text message before she was due to perform. In divorce papers filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Brand cited “irreconcilable differences.”
Morgan wrote that he asked Perry, in 2013, if she wanted to sit down to discuss her thoughts and feelings with him following the pair's divorce, but she was "not ready yet."
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The 58-year-old went on to say that Perry supposedly continued: “Because you'll get the truth out of me, and I'm just not ready to tell you the truth! In fact, I'm not sure I'm ready to admit the truth to myself.”
In the wake of allegations made against Brand, following a joint investigation by The Sunday Times and Channel 4's Dispatches, comments she made during an interview with Vogue in 2013 have been revisited. In it, she makes several veiled remarks about her ex that some suggest might be linked to his alleged transgressions.
Although Perry initially shouldered the blame for their breakup, her tone in the interview hinted at deeper issues with Brand.
“I felt a lot of responsibility for it ending, but then I found out the real truth,” she said, without delving into specifics.
Four women have accused Brand of sexual assaults between 2006 and 2013, one of whom was 16 at the time. Met Police have urged any alleged victims to contact them and have said it is investigating another allegation from 2003. The report has since led to further alleged victims coming forward. Brand denies all criminal wrongdoing.
Morgan went on in his column to reveal the nickname Perry used to use to refer to Brand.
She called him ‘Rasputin’ - in relation to Siberian-born Grigori Rasputin - who was dubbed "Russia’s greatest ever love machine" by Boney M.
Rasputin was renowned for seducing women and was also known for the major influence he cast once he befriended the imperial family of Tsar Nicholas II.
Morgan claimed Perry told him: "You Brits are all the same, so damn confident… Trouble is, I find that irresistible. I love Brits… Well, not all of them – not Rasputin, obviously.”
After that, Morgan said he told Brand who reportedly replied: “He was a pretty powerful bloke, he could manipulate folk with his eyes.
"I like Rasputin… he was all right, wasn't he… a mad monk with magical, mystical powers, having it off with everyone, drinking and getting into fights.”
Perry and Brand met when she was 25 and he 35 while filming the 2010 movie Get Him To The Greek.
In the Times and Channel 4 report, one of Brand’s accusers alleged he raped her against a wall in his LA home and that she sought treatment at a rape crisis centre the same day. Another alleged he assaulted her when she was aged 16 during an emotionally abusive and controlling relationship. A third claims Brand sexually assaulted her in Los Angeles and later threatened to take legal action if she spoke about the allegation to anyone else. And a fourth described being sexually assaulted by Brand and also claimed he was both physically and emotionally abusive towards her.
In a statement on Friday ahead of the report, Brand said the allegations against him “pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies, and as I have written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous.”
He continued: “Now during that time of promiscuity the relationships I had were absolutely, always consensual. I was always transparent about that then, almost too transparent, and I am being transparent about it now as well.
“To see that transparency metastasised into something criminal, that I absolutely deny, makes me question – is there another agenda at play?”
Brand has claimed that there is witnesses whose evidence “directly contradicts the narrative that these two mainstream media outlets are trying to construct.”
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