‘It’s clearly time to cut’: Tyler Perry faces ultimate friendship trial as he faces ‘insatiable appetite’ for Meghan Markle gossip

Tyler Perry has kept tight-lipped and avoided questioning when asked about his friendship with the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle.

The actor and producer was asked about relationship with Markle and her husband, Prince Harry, during a recent profile interview for The Sunday Times. Perry and Markle grew close in 2020, when she and Harry had withdrawn from royal duties and were living in temporary exile in Canada. Reaching out before the borders closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Perry offered the couple his private jet, security team and house in Los Angeles, the city they have since permanently relocated to.

Since then, the friendship has only grown stronger, with Perry being the godfather to Harry and Meghan’s three-year-old daughter, Lillibet. More recently, Perry and Markle were photographed together at the Paley Honors Gala in LA, where the actor was receiving a lifetime achievement award. While their relationship has consistently made headlines — as is to be expected for such a talked-about couple like Harry and Meghan — Perry stayed pretty cagey when quizzed about the royals by The Sunday Times. 

The Madea star was asked how he prepared his home for Harry and Meghan before they arrived in LA, and offered a curt response. “I didn’t,” the actor said, “Meghan is from California. She knows California well. So there was nothing to prepare them for.” According to interviewer Megan Agnew, broaching the topic of Harry and Megan led to “any conversational intimacy evaporating” on Perry’s end, but he did explain his reason for remaining so hesitant to discuss the pair. The actor said he had “learned” after years of their friendship “that any question that is asked becomes the headline of anything I say.”

Perry said this tendency of details about Harry and Meghan to pull focus is borne out of an “insatiable appetite to know all about them.” He was then asked why the public’s appetite is so feverish about the couple, at which point he told Agnew that she “would know better than I would because I’m not paying attention to that world.” By the interviewer’s approximation, discussing Markle was seemingly a touchy subject, to the point where it was “clearly time to cut” the line of questioning and cue the “next scene.”

While Perry wanted to avoid discussing Meghan in that case, the pair have been more open about their friendship in the past. In the 2022 Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, the Suits actress said she was grateful that Perry had offered his home during such a tumultuous period in her and Harry’s life. “I’d never met him before,” the Duchess said. “I was just crying and crying, and sometimes it’s easier to open up to someone who knows nothing at all, and that was that moment with me and Tyler.” 

For his part, Perry told E! earlier this year that Harry and Meghan “love each other,” adding that “they have a beautiful family and I just want the best for them.” Perry isn’t the only celebrity who has offered Harry and Meghan a place to stay in the years since the so-called ‘Megxit’. Last month, amid speculation that Harry and Meghan might be targeted by president-elect Donald Trump’s immigration policies, Ellen Degeneres reportedly suggested the pair stay in her new home in the UK.