The celebrity godfather to Harry and Meghan’s daughter Lilibet has been revealed.
In the final episode of Netflix documentary Harry and Meghan, Tyler Perry confirmed that he is godfather to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s second child.
The final three episodes of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Netflix docuseries were released on Thursday 15 December. Volume two focused on the events after the couple’s 2018 wedding, including their eventual departure from the royal family in 2020.
After stepping down as senior members of the royal family, the couple briefly relocated to Canada with their son, Archie, before moving to Los Angeles, California. There, the family stayed at media mogul Tyler Perry’s home for six weeks prior to finding a permanent residence in Montecito.
During the episode, Meghan described how the couple felt “complete” once they welcomed their second child, daughter Lilibet Diana, in June 2021. Perry recalled how Meghan and Harry called him on the phone when they asked him to be Lili’s godfather.
“We’ll call and we’ll chat and we’ll talk about silly things, and they were pretty serious on the phone and I go, ‘Okay, what’s going on?’” Perry explained. “They said, ‘Well, we’d like for you to be Lili’s godfather.’ I go, ‘Whoa.’ I had to take a minute to take that in and I thought, ‘I’d be honored. I’d be absolutely honored.’”
However, Perry had one condition to being their daughter’s godfather.
“I got off the phone, took it all in, and then called them back, and I go, ‘Uh, hold on a second – does that mean we got to go over there and do all of that in the church with them [the royal family] and figure that all out, because I don’t wanna do that,” he said. “Maybe we can do a little private ceremony here and let that be that, and if you have to do it there, then that’s okay.”
In volume two of the docuseries, Tyler Perry revealed that he first reached out to Meghan after seeing media coverage of her father Thomas Markle. The actor and media mogul said he “immediately empathised” with the duchess because he has seen “family members become different people” due to his success.
Before Harry and Meghan’s wedding in May 2018, Perry sent her a note “praying for her to be able to move through” the public scrutiny.
When the couple were living on Vancouver Island in Canada, Meghan decided to call Perry for the first time, years after he had sent the letter.
“I was just a wreck,” Meghan says about their phone call in the docuseries. “I was just crying and crying. Sometimes it’s easier to just open up to someone who knows nothing at all.”
Perry said he could “hear the fear” in Meghan’s voice during their conversation.
“She was afraid of them destroying her, or going crazy, or them making her think she’s crazy,” the movie producer said.
He went on to explain how he watched his mother be abused in the past, and recognised similarities in the way Meghan and Harry were treated after announcing they would step down from royal duties.
“I saw my mother be abused for years. I knew the symptoms, I knew what it was like,” he said in the interview clip. “Everyone’s like, ‘Tyler, how dare you compare this to the abuse of your mother?’ This woman was abused and so was he.”
Perry then compared “the institution” to a “batterer” for the way the royal couple were treated, saying: “To use the institution to try and do all the things a batterer would do, like, here’s what we’re gonna do, ‘we’re gonna cut off the money; we’re not gonna leave you security; we’re gonna do all those things to make you comply and come back’.”
“And for the both of them to have the wherewithal to say ‘I don’t give a damn if it’s the palace. I’m outta here,’ I applauded that,” he said.
