Long before Katy Perry hit the stage for the final show of her Las Vegas residency, the crowd at Resorts World Theatre was going wild.
Though the audience was already buzzing in anticipation of the “Roar” singer’s Saturday show, that excitement reached a fever pitch when two big-time guests—Prince Harry and Meghan Markle—were escorted to their seats in the venue’s VIP section, threatening to overshadow Perry’s big night.
Perry’s residency, entitled “Katy Perry: PLAY” kicked off in December 2021, about nine months after Meghan and Harry’s interview with Oprah Winfrey that laid bare their estrangement from the rest of the royal family.
As a result of that break, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex settled in Montecito, California, just down the street from Perry’s home with her husband, actor Orlando Bloom.
The two famous families bonded over a shared frustration with the paparazzi, Harry told Armchair Expert podcast hosts Dax Shepherd and Monica Padman in May 2021.
“Just two days ago, Orlando Bloom sent me a message — because he’s just down the road and we sort of keep in contact because of the paparazzi — he sent me a photograph which his security got of this long-haired guy with a beanie on, with his ear pods in, with his massive camera lying in the back of his 4×4 truck,” Harry said at the time. “A woman driving who did the peace sign sitting there as a distraction, and he is laid down in the back of this truck taking photographs of them out with their kid and whoever else is in that area.”
It’s worth noting, however, that Perry hasn’t clearly chosen a side in Harry and Meghan’s boundary-setting with their family. Just last May, Perry performed at King Charles’s coronation concert, an event that Harry skipped.
Going further back, to 2018, Perry told an interviewer that Markle’s Givenchy wedding dress needed “one more fitting,” and said that, in some imaginary competition between royal wedding dresses, “Kate won. Kate won. I’m sorry, I’m never not going to tell the truth.”
But that latter slight, which was unearthed a few months ago, appears to be in the past. And on Saturday night, Bloom and the Sussexes’ reviled paparazzi were far less covert than they are in the celebs’ California neighborhood.
Slews of social media users, including Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter John Katsilometes, captured Harry and Meghan as they were escorted to their seats in the stadium, accompanied by gasps, screams, and cheers from the crowd.
The pair were joined by fashion designer Misha Nonoo and her husband, Mike Hess, WION reports; another couple with ties to the singer: Perry and then-boyfriend Bloom were guests at Hess and Nonoo’s 2019 wedding in Rome, an event Markle also attended.
The group was seated in the VIP section near Celine Dion, but it’s unclear if the celebrities spoke.
Also unclear is if Harry had a better time at Perry’s show than he seemed to at a September stop of Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour, during which he spent the evening standing stiffly and checking his phone.
