Katy Perry opens up about depression and suicide
Katy Perry broke down with emotion when describing her depression and offered to bury the hatchet with fellow pop superstar Taylor Swift as she livestreamed her life for 96 hours.
To promote her fifth album "Witness," Perry invited fans to watch her inside a Los Angeles home for a full weekend through Monday as the 32-year-old singer slept, cooked, did yoga, cuddled with her dog Nugget and chatted with a stream of celebrities who showed up at her door.
Despite putting her life temporarily under observation with 41 cameras, Perry -- born Katheryn Hudson to conservative Christian parents in California -- said she struggled to handle the attention to her life more broadly.
"I built up this Katy Perry thing that everybody knows and that's the reason why they're tuning in and it's fantastic, but it's more of a facade," she told the therapist Siri Singh.
Perry, who said that therapy has helped her, cried at length as she said she struggled with depression.
"I'm ashamed because of course Katy Perry is so strong, but it's hard because I feel ashamed that I would even have those thoughts and feel that low or that depressed," said Perry, the most followed person on Twitter with nearly 100 million followers.
Read: These covers of Katy Perry’s ‘Chained To The Rhythm’ will blow your mind
"I'm human and I'm living under this crazy microscope," she said, tears smudging her mascara.
"Look at Katy Perry -- she's so glamorous, she's rich, she's luxurious, successful and, like, Katheryn Hudson -- I didn't have any money, I didn't have any influence, I didn't have anything."
The former brunette said that her new hairdo -- cut short and dyed blonde -- was an effort to "be my authentic self 100 percent, so it hurts when I don't feel that I can."
At another point of the weekend, Perry said she wanted to end her feud with Swift -- and broke out into "Let It Go," from the Disney film "Frozen."
"I forgive her and I'm sorry for anything I ever did. And I hope the same for her," she told Arianna Huffington for the media entrepreneur's new Thrive Global project on wellness.
"There's a lot of other things out there in the world that people need to be focused on," she said, adding: "God bless her, honestly."
The two stars' rivalry blew into the open when Swift wrote the song "Bad Blood" after appearing to accuse Perry of poaching back-up dancers.
Swift, one of the most prominent foes of Spotify, suddenly released her music on all streaming platforms Friday at the exact moment Perry's "Witness" came out.