‘I don’t want to do this’

Tyler Perry is the godfather of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s daughter Lilibet – and in the second installment of the Netflix docu-series Harry & Meghan, the Hollywood mogul admitted he had refused to travel to the UK for her christening.

Perry, 53, said his reason was because he “didn’t want to do all that stuff with them in church and find out all that stuff,” implying all the fuss surrounding the royal family put him off.

“Maybe we can hold a private ceremony here and leave it at that,” he said. “And if you have to do it there, that’s okay.”

Perry, 53, famously let the couple stay in his $18 million LA estate after they first moved to the United States in 2020 — an event that’s since been dubbed “Megxit.”

It’s also revealed in Harry & Meghan that the couple hadn’t even met Perry before. The filmmaker had simply reached out to Meghan after seeing negative reports in the press about her father Thomas Markle.

“I’m not a royal observer, I don’t really pay attention to a lot of things,” he said. “But I saw something about her father [posing for the paparazzi]. I found it hurtful if he were my father. And I couldn’t even imagine that this woman would find the man she loves, the man of her dreams, and he’s a prince, and then walk into all this madness and need the security of a family and then do something to your father to let horrible things.”

However, several years passed without further contact between Perry and the couple.

“And one day when we were in Canada, I called him,” Markle said. “Finally, after years at this point. [It was] the first time we spoke to each other. And I was just a wreck, I cried and cried. Sometimes it’s easier to open up to someone who doesn’t know anything at all. And that was that moment with me and Tyler.”

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The resulting relationship between the couple and Perry led them to make him Lilibet’s godparents. He recalled the moment he was asked, “They were pretty serious on the phone and I was like, ‘Okay, what’s up,’ and they were like, ‘Well, we want you to be Lili’s godfather.’ I had to take a minute to process that and I thought I was honoured, absolutely honoured.”

The Harry & Meghan docuseries, now streaming all six episodes on Netflix, sees Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and their friends discuss their perspectives on everything from the couple’s wedding to their retirement from royal life . According to the streaming giant, the first part, which premiered last week, was Netflix’s biggest documentary debut ever, with 28 million households watching the drama.

The second part of the documentary sees Prince Harry making the explosive claim that his brother Prince William “bullied” him out of the royal family. Perry is a newcomer in the second half of Harry and Meghan and did not appear in the first part of the series.