The ‘Firework’ singer embarked on the first all-female space mission in six decades on Monday (April 14), organised by billionaire Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company Blue Origin.
She was joined on the 11-minute voyage by former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, film producer Kerianne Flynn, Gayle King, and Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sánchez.
The six participants travelled over 100km (62 miles) above Earth, crossed the internationally recognised boundary of space, and experienced a few moments of weightlessness (via BBC News). While in space, Perry sang Louis Armstrong’s ‘What A Wonderful World’ and revealed the setlist for her upcoming ‘Lifetimes’ tour.
But some were unimpressed, with the trip sparking criticism and numerous memes online. It has been labelled as “wealth tourism” by some, while model and actor Emily Ratajkowski said she was “disgusted” by the mission.
Now, singer and actor Lily Allen has weighed in with her thoughts during the latest episode of her Miss Me? podcast with Miquita Oliver.
“Do we want to talk about Katy Perry and her mates all going up to space for 12 minutes?” Allen asked her co-host, to which she responded: “I think that if they’re going to go up to space for 12 minutes, we can talk about it for 10 seconds, and that’s about all it deserves – ratio-wise.”
Allen then said: “I mean, what the fucking hell is that all about? But in all seriousness: What? Why? For why? […] I think they just went out of the atmosphere and then turned around and came back again. They didn’t go to the moon or some shit.”
After Oliver told Allen that the celebrities had visited the inner regions of space to experience some “floating [and] flying”, the singer explained: “I just think it’s so out of touch.”
Allen continued: “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 feels fucking expensive at the moment. It’s hard to leave the house without spending 500 dollars – 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 – it’s so expensive […] I’m really OK, financially, and it [still] feels glaringly obvious how fucking hard it is…”
Oliver responded by saying: “[It’s] not really the most appropriate time to send Katy Perry into space”. Allen shouted back: “For absolutely no fucking reason! We send people to space to discover things, like scientific reasons.”
Agreeing that the mission was “terrible timing” because of the current state of the world, Allen added: “And the fact that they’ve made it some sort of feminist thing! […] The only one who really should be congratulated is [the] rocket scientist called Aisha Bowe. There’s also a civil rights activist, Amanda Nguyen.”
The pop artist then hit out at “Oprah’s mate” Gayle King, who recently responded to the “disappointing” criticism of the Blue Origin space flight.
Oliver continued: “I don’t know what they were trying to do, but I don’t think it’s done what it was meant to do. So maybe we’ll stop spending money on this now.” Watch the clip and listen to the interview in full above.
Emily Ratajkowski previously described the voyage as “end time shit”. She added: “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?”
Elsewhere, Olivia Munn also slammed the “gluttonous” all-female space mission, saying: “It’s so much money to go to space, and there are a lot of people who can’t even afford eggs.”
Upon returning to Earth, Perry explained that the journey had made her “feel super connected to love” and was only “second to being a mum”.
