Between COVID, a newborn little girl at home and American Idol about to crank up again, Katy Perry doesn’t get out much lately. But on Monday night (Feb. 8) she put on her best dress and hit the stage of Jimmy Kimmel Live! for a socially distanced interview with the host, who noted that he’s always surprised by her hair color and length.
“Well, you know, I like to keep people on the edge of their seats,” Perry, 36, said with delight about what she later revealed on an Instagram Story was her blonde pixie cut under the long black wig she wore on the show. Rocking a form-fitting, colorful maxi-dress emblazoned with dragonflies and flowers, the singer said she has to seize the moment when she can. “When mom has a night off she leans all the way in,” Perry said, calling motherhood the “best decision” she’s ever made, while later lamenting that “nobody talks about the first six weeks after you have the baby… oooohhhh my G-d that’s wild, what a rollercoaster!!!”
While most first-time mothers of six-month-old babies complain about being tired all the time due to wacked-out sleep schedules, Perry looked bright eyed as she noted that daughter Daisy is doing great with support from Perry’s family and her papa, fiancé Orlando Bloom, who knows a thing or two about being a dad already. “I have an incredible fiancé who has done this before. He has a 10-year-old son,” Perry said of Bloom’s son, Flynn, with ex-wife Miranda Kerr. “So he’s been amazing, and we’re so in love and we’re so grateful.”
Perry said despite the pandemic, Bloom was in the delivery room, boombox in hand, providing all the support she needed while handling the video coverage of the event and staying totally present. “‘Daisy’ to me means pure, like, purity and ‘dove’ means peace, and ‘bloom’ kind of feels like it means joy,” she said of their daughter’s name, which Kimmel joked reminded him more of a cartoon duck and a bar of soap.
When Kimmel put up a photo of the hand-embroidered baby blanket Perry and Bloom received from Taylor Swift, Katy said it was “it was amazing, it was very, very thoughtful… she’s very sweet.” She also joked about how the normal album release cycle was upended by baby Daisy, when her fifth album, Smile, dropped the day after she gave birth while she was still in the hospital. “I could not wipe my own butt! And I was like, ‘this is the most unusual album release day for me, and I love it!,'” Perry laughed.
Because she performed during the Super Bowl halftime show six years ago, Perry said she watched Sunday’s game while rocking Daisy, praising The Weeknd for his innovative use of space during his performance. “I liked how Abel commanded the field and all of the dancers were moshing and throwing elbows, it was very, like, punk rock,” she said, adding that she remembers spending “thousands” of her own money for her performance, but nowhere near the $7 million the “Blinding Lights” singer claimed he pulled out of his own pocket for the extravaganza.
“You get a budget and sometimes your dreams are bigger than the budget,” Perry said, joking that viral sensation Left Shark was clearly a result of her own budget cuts. She also revealed that when she was rehearsing for her SB performance, she rode a fire pole to get down off the golden lion prop and her latex beach balloon outfit split in half due to the friction. “I was a few days out from playing the day and I was like, ‘oh, this is why we do rehearsals with costumes!,” she said. “It was like rubber on metal, let’s go!”
Promoting the upcoming Feb. 14 return of American Idol, Perry noted that her fellow judges also gave Daisy some nice gifts, with Lionel Richie coming through with a “nice robe and bottle of champagne for mom and dad” and Luke Bryan offering up a pink tractor and Daisy BB gun. “Us judges we stay true to who we are,” she said with a smile.
Watch Perry on Kimmel below.
