Tyler Perry wishes the world knew the depth of love between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
The director/actor/writer discussed the controversial couple — to whom he opened his home when they first moved to California — on Wednesday’s Today With Hoda & Jenna. He spoke about the “support” he offered when they stepped down as senior members of the British royal family, allowing them to live in his Beverly Hills mansion for months and use his security detail during the spring of 2020.
“It was a very difficult time for them,” Perry said.
He continued, “What I know about the two of them, and I wish the world knew, [is] how much these two people love each other. They found each other out of all these odds against them finding each other. They found each other and the love they have is really, really moving and I wanted to do anything I could to support them.”
Perry said he looks at the couple as an example of what he’d like to have in a relationship. (Perry and longtime girlfriend, Gelila Bekele, with whom he shares a son, split in 2020.)
“If I don’t have that, what she and Harry have, I don’t want it,” he said. “It’s true.”
The former Suits actress recently talked about Perry befriending her soon after she married Harry in 2018. While they hadn’t met, he communicated to her that he was praying for her “and that he understood what this meant,” she told The Cut in August. “He could only imagine what it was like” for a biracial American to marry a British royal. The billionaire media mogul urged her to reach out if she ever needed support.
In 2020, she did — after she and Harry abruptly left Britain and royal life. They had set up a temporary home, with son Archie (they now also have Lilibet), in Canada, but their whereabouts had been discovered by the media and they had no security, having relinquished their royal roles.
“Sometimes, you can tell your life story to a stranger on a plane as opposed to some of the people that are closest to you,” Markle said of reaching out to Perry — whom she still hadn’t met in person — for advice on their next move. The man behind the Madea franchise offered them his Beverly Hills mansion, and security detail, while they plotted their next move. They lived there for several months before buying their $14.7 million Montecito, Calif., compound.
In Markle’s sitting room of her new home — where neighbors include Oprah Winfrey (friend of Perry and the couple) — is a grand piano Perry gave her as a housewarming gift, with the instruction: “Write the soundtrack for your life,” as it was noted in The Cut interview.
Harry and Markle returned to the spotlight in England this month after the death of Queen Elizabeth on Sept. 8. Their every move has been chronicled as they reunited with the royal family — amid their ongoing estrangement, which exploded after their bombshell Winfrey interview in 2021 — to mourn the long-reigning monarch who was buried on Monday.
A royal insider told People magazine that William and Kate reuniting with Harry and Meghan “was awkward. Both couples found it hard. They were in a stoic spirit of just getting through it for the queen.”
