Lily previously called the misguided space mission “so out of touch,” and while she stands by this, she regrets joining the “pile on” by name-checking Katy specifically.
It’s fair to say that Katy Perry’s space mission earlier this month was not received as well as she’d perhaps hoped, with the star being subjected to widespread scrutiny after she and five other women briefly ventured into space with Blue Origin, billionaire Jeff Bezos’s private space company.
CBS / Via x.com
Katy Perry was joined by Jeff’s fiancée Lauren Sánchez, as well as Gayle King, producer Kerianne Flynn, and scientists Aisha Bowe and Amanda Nguyễn, with the flight marking the first all-female space crew in 60 years.
At this point, it’s worth noting that Katy and co. weren’t really “crew” in the literal sense of the word, as the ship used was “fully autonomous,” meaning that nobody on board had to actually operate it.
The trip lasted a total of 11 minutes, with the group only spending around four minutes in actual space. And Katy made the absolute most of those four minutes, as she spent the time promoting her tour and singing a song for the other women.
Needless to say, the whole thing sparked serious backlash, with several famous faces speaking out against the misguided stunt — including British singer Lily Allen. Speaking on the April 17 episode of her podcast, Miss Me?, Lily said to her cohost Miquita Oliver: “Do we want to talk about Katy Perry and her mates all going up to space for 12 minutes?”
Miss Me? / Via instagram.com
“I think that if they’re going to go to space for 12 minutes, we can talk about it for 10 seconds, and that’s about all it deserves,” Miquita retorted.
“I mean, what the frickin’ hell was that all about?” Lily went on. “No, but in all seriousness, what? Why?”
“I just think it’s so out of touch,” she added. “We’re on the brink of recession, people are really fucking struggling to make ends meet and get food on their table. I don’t know about how things feel in London, but in New York, it’s really fucking expensive at the moment. It’s hard to leave the house without spending $500, and I’m not even joking. It’s cheaper for me to DoorDash food, to get takeaway, than it is for me to go and get groceries and cook, it’s so expensive here at the moment. So expensive.”
CBS / Via x.com
“And I just think that I’m really OK financially,” Lily explained. “[But] it feels glaringly obvious how fucking hard it is to make it work in a city like this. And I know it’s not necessarily a nationwide issue in terms of New York is definitely at the steeper end of the country than other places, it just seems like things are hard at the moment…”
“And not really the most appropriate time to send Katy Perry into space,” Miquita finished.
“For absolutely no fucking reason!” Lily exclaimed. “It’s like… We send people to space to discover things, like scientific reason.”
“It really is quite bad timing considering where we’re at, particularly right now in the world, bloody terrible timing,” Miquita mused, to which Lily added: “And the fact that they have made it some sort of feminist thing…”
“Oh no, stop, the shoehorning of the feminism, I cannot, please!” Miquita replied.
And while many people appeared to share Lily’s sentiment at the time, the star has now admitted that she regrets taking aim at Katy in this way. Speaking on Monday’s episode of Miss Me?, Lily said that she believes it was her “own internalized misogyny” that triggered her into making the original comments.
Miss Me? / Via Instagram: @https://www.instagram.com/miquitaoliver/?hl=en
After Miquita brought up Meghan Markle, Lily said: “Because we’re talking about a very famous female person who’s a bit divisive, I would actually like to apologize for being mean about Katy Perry last week. There was actually no need for me to bring her name into it, and it was my own internalized misogyny.”
John Nacion / WWD via Getty Images
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and it was just completely unnecessary to pile on with her,” she went on. “I do disagree with what it was that they did, but she wasn’t the only person that did it. She was possibly the most famous and the one that divides people the most, and so, I don’t know, there was something in me that decided to choose her as the person that should… Anyway, I just, I’m really sorry.”
Gilbert Flores / Variety via Getty Images
“I would have been hurt if it had been me and someone in my industry used me and my name,” Lily admitted. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Katy Perry, I know you don’t listen to the show, but yeah, sorry.”
As mentioned, Lily was far from the only celeb to criticize Katy and co., with Emily Ratajkowski winning widespread praise for calling out the space mission in a TikTok video, where she said: “That space mission this morning? That's end time shit. Like, this is beyond parody. Saying that you care about Mother Earth and it's about Mother Earth, and you're going up in a spaceship that is built and paid for by a company that's single-handedly destroying the planet? Look at the state of the world and think about how many resources went into putting these women into space... For what? What was the marketing there? … I’m disgusted. Literally, I’m disgusted.”
Justin Hamel / Getty Images
Olivia Wilde also appeared to be cynical, posting to her Instagram story at the time: “Billion dollars bought some good memes I guess,” and Olivia Munnspokeout against the whole thing before the even rocket took off, saying on an episode of TODAY with Jenna & Friends: "If you wanna go up to space, why do you need to tell us about it? I know this is probably obnoxious, but like, it’s so much money to go to space, and there’s a lot of people who can’t even afford eggs.”
“Space exploration was to further our knowledge and to help mankind,” she added. “What are they gonna do up there that has made it better for us down here?"
