Celebrity
Katy Perry Broke A Royal Tradition While Meeting King Charles
The singer also addressed her viral Coronation gaffe.
Katy Perry had a run-in with King Charles and Queen Camilla that broke royal tradition.
When the singer attended the British monarch’s Coronation Day celebrations in May 2023, at which she performed a special concert for senior members of the royal family, the King invited her and her mother to stay at Windsor Castle during her visit.
“I brought my mother because, I mean, that’s like the best gift you could ever give your mom,” she told Jimmy Kimmel on his Feb. 12 show. She remembers rushing through the grounds of Windsor Castle to film an American Idol segment with Lionel Richie and the King and Queen.
“Everyone was running,” she told Kimmel. “I ran straight into them, and I was like, ‘Oh, went the wrong way!’”
It wasn’t exactly protocol. According to official royal traditions, the King and Queen are greeted with either a “neck bow (from the head only)” or a “small curtsy,” which Perry didn’t do. (Technically there are “no obligatory codes of behavior” when meeting the royal family, but many people “wish to observe the traditional forms.”)
Perry, whose final season as an Idol judge starts airing Feb. 18, went on to praise Richie for organizing the King and Queen’s cameo, adding that he “could convince anyone to do anything.”
It Wasn’t Her Only Coronation Gaffe
The “Roar” hitmaker also addressed the viral video of her struggling to find her seat at King Charles’ crowning ceremony in Westminster Abbey.
“It’s general admission?” asked a surprised Kimmel. “There’s no assigned seating,” Perry revealed, apart from “the first two rows.”
Kimmel later asked if the guests she sat in front of were happy to be positioned behind her pink headpiece, to which Perry bluntly replied, “No.”
