Godfather Tyler Perry skipped Lilibet’s christening: ‘I don’t want to do that’

Tyler Perry is the godfather to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s daughter, Lilibet — and in the second part of the Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, the Hollywood mogul admitted that he refused to travel to the UK for her christening. 

Perry, 53, said that his reason was that he didn’t want to “do all of that in the church with them and figure all of that out,” implying that all the hullabaloo around the royal family was what put him off. 

“Maybe we can do a private ceremony here and let that be that,” he said. “And if you have to do it there, then that’s OK.”

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

In Harry & Meghan, it’s also revealed the couple hadn’t even met Perry before this. The filmmaker had simply reached out to Meghan after he saw negative stories in the press about her father Thomas Markle.

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

However, a few years went by without further contact between Perry and the couple.

“And then one day when we were in Canada I had called him,” said Markle. “Finally, after years at that point. [It was] the first time we ever spoke. And I was just a wreck, I was crying and crying. Like sometimes it’s easier to just open up to someone who knows nothing at all. And that was that moment with me and Tyler.”
 

The ensuing relationship between the couple and Perry led to them making him Lilibet’s godfather. He recalled the moment he was asked: “They were pretty serious on the phone and I am like, ‘OK, what’s going on?’ and they said, ‘Well, we would like for you to be Lili’s godfather.’ I had to take a minute to take that in, and I thought I’d be honoured, absolutely be honoured.”

The docuseries “Harry & Meghan,” which is now streaming with all six episodes on Netflix, features Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and their friends speaking out about their perspectives on everything from the couple’s wedding to their step back 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 unfold. 

The second part of the docuseries features Prince Harry making the explosive claim that his brother Prince William “bullied” him out of the royal family. Perry is a new addition to the second half of “Harry & Meghan,” and did not feature in the first part of the series.

This article was originally published by the New York Post and reproduced with permission