By Marianka Swain
London: A wedding is usually a joyous occasion, and a royal wedding doubly so, but at this weekend’s nuptials for Norwegian Princess Martha Louise and her controversial self-styled shaman partner, bisexual African-American Durek Verrett, there will be more than a few family members wishing she would say, “I don’t.”
Not that any such censure would deter Martha Louise, 52, the rebel princess who has chosen her beau not on the basis of any noble bloodline. Instead, this is a marriage based on the outlandish idea that the loved-up couple – who both claim to possess mystical powers – met in Ancient Egypt in a past life.
Norway’s Princess Martha Louise and her groom, Durek Verrett, ahead of their wedding on Saturday. Credit: AP
It’s the latest extraordinary, and to many alarming, choice by Norway’s fourth in line to the throne, who calls herself a clairvoyant and, from 2007 to 2018, ran an alternative therapy centre dubbed the “angel school” because she asserts that she can aid healing by communing with angels.
The eldest child of Crown Prince Harald and Crown Princess Sonja, Martha Louise has frequently shocked her nation with such statements. Perhaps, in a strange way, that makes her the perfect match for Verrett, 49, who boasts that he realised he had shamanic powers aged three when he saw his deceased ancestors in the room. He will make history as the first black man to marry into a modern European royal family.
However, the reaction to their 2023 engagement was deeply hostile. “We get comments like ‘It’s not going to last’,” Verrett reveals. He has even been accused, he says, of “casting spells on [Martha Louise] to have her fall in love with me and [that] I’m doing black magic”, and people have made death threats on Instagram. Martha Louise adds: “Being a white person, I don’t meet racism every day, so I don’t know what it’s like. It’s been shocking.”
Norway’s Princess Martha Louise and Durek Verrett arrive at the pier in Alesund, Norway, on Friday.Credit: AP
Verrett admits that he occasionally plays up to that “kooky shaman” reputation. “I’ll call Martha up and say, ‘So, today I told everyone I’m a reptile’ and she’s like ‘Oh, here we go …’”
But many are struggling to see the funny side of her wedding to a man who has been accused of lying about his origins, peddling dangerous conspiracy theorie and abusing a former partner.
While Martha Louise spent her childhood in Norway’s royal residences, Verrett grew up in San Francisco’s Bay Area, born, he has publicly claimed, to a wealthy architect father, David, who had servants and a private plane.
However his mother, Veruschka Urquhart, and his paternal aunt, opera singer Shirley Verrett, vigorously dispute that. They say David was actually a contractor who twice went bankrupt, while Urquhart, in an interview with magazine Se og Hør last year, warned that her estranged son is a dangerous, lying manipulator who has “brainwashed” his royal bride.
A furious Verrett responded by sending his mother a cease and desist letter, threatening her with a million-dollar lawsuit, and stating that she was not invited to the wedding.
“We agree to disagree”: Norway’s King Harald and Queen Sonja announced in 2022 that Princess Martha Louise would no longer carry out official duties for the royal household.Credit: AP
What is not in doubt is that Verrett has a criminal past. In 1991, he was sentenced to five years for felony, arson and trespassing after hosting a party in an unoccupied house that was set on fire. He was arrested again in 1993 and 2011 for crimes including fare evasion and threatening his Los Angeles landlord with murder and “black magic”. In 2015, he was charged with assault and battery after a domestic violence attack on his then-fiance, masseur Hank Greenberg.
But most worrying are Verrett’s wild health claims. In his 2019 book Spirit Hacking, which was dropped by publisher Cappelen Damm, he declares that children get cancer if they’re unhappy, chemotherapy is a scam, and women need to buy his exercises to “clean out” their vaginas because casual sex attracts subterranean spirits.
In 2022, Verrett sold a medallion that he promised would cure COVID until the Norwegian authorities shut him down. He rants about 5G and the Illuminati, says he has risen from the dead, and that he knew the September 11, 2001 attacks would happen but chose not to intervene. Verrett also claims that naughty children and suicidal people are possessed by evil spirits.
One might have thought this horrific statement in particular would deter Martha Louise, given that her first husband, writer Ari Behn, took his own life, yet she has been dating and working with Verrett since May 2019. Although they believe they first met centuries ago: “I have memories of us in Egypt,” Verrett said. “She was my queen, and I was a pharaoh.”
Members of Norway’s royal family arrive in the village of Geiranger on Friday, ahead of the wedding.Credit: AP
Martha Louise stepped down as a senior member of Norway’s royal family in November 2022, but senior figures have continued to criticise the union. In 2023, politician Ole Henrik Krat Bjørkholt labelled Verrett “an unscrupulous and dangerous charlatan”, while many in the Norwegian media have called for Martha Louise to be stripped of her “princess” title. Most recently, she used that title and her royal monogram on a custom gin created for the wedding but was forced to withdraw it following an uproar.
But that was just one element of this elaborate New Age event, which began on Thursday with a meet and greet at Hotel 1904 in the Norwegian coastal town of Alesund. The couple donned matching bespoke bubblegum-pink outfits by Martha Louise’s brand Hest. The princess wore a heart-shaped buckle to symbolise, she said, that “love conquers all”.
On Friday, guests were transported by boat to the four-star Hotel Union in the village of Geiranger (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), with views of waterfalls and mountains. That was followed by a glamorous Latin American-themed cocktail party with salsa dancing. The wedding ceremony takes place about 1pm on Saturday (8pm AEST), followed by afternoon tea and then a gala dinner and party (with the bar open until 3am). Finally, there’s a post-wedding brunch on Sunday, which reportedly features performances by Stevie Wonder and the Black Eyed Peas.
The wedding party includes seven bridesmaids and seven groomsmen – the former likely including Martha Louise’s daughters, Maud Angelica, 21, Leah Isadora, 19, and Emma Tallulah, 15. Parish priest Margit Lovise Holte is officiating, while Reverend Michael Beckwith, a New Thought minister whose Los Angeles church has been attended by Oprah Winfrey, will be present. Doria Ragland, mother of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, is also participating.
Instead of the country’s national broadcaster and news agency covering the wedding, as is tradition for royal occasions, Martha Louise and Verrett have struck lucrative deals with Netflix (which is filming a documentary about them) and Hello! magazine. Guests must abide by a social media ban – although Martha Louise is already teasing details on her own Instagram.
The Royal House of Norway’s head of communications, Guri Varpe, has confirmed that the rest of the royal family (which includes Martha Louise’s parents, King Harald and Queen Sonja, and her brother Crown Prince Haakon, all of whom are staying aboard the royal yacht) will avoid being photographed or filmed since that would give Netflix and Hello! unfair access.
But that decision perhaps also reflects their serious reservations about this marriage. Although Martha Louise tells the London Telegraph that her parents “have grown to love Durek very much”, she admits that this union is “extremely, terribly out of the box”.
Other signs that this will not, as Verrett put it, “be just some ordinary wedding” include the dress code for the pre-wedding party, which – in a departure from royal protocol – is “sexy and cool”. For the ceremony itself, women are asked to wear long ballgowns but to avoid white, all black, all pink and gold, while men are encouraged to think “Oscars red carpet”.
The 350-strong guest list includes celebrities and social media influencers, such as American reality star Cynthia Bailey and body-positive model Margie Plus. Oscar winner and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow may well be in attendance too: she has called Verrett a “soul brother”, and he and Martha Louise holidayed with the actress in the Hamptons in 2019.
One notable absentee is 27-year-old Marius Borg Høiby, Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s son from a previous relationship, who earlier this month was arrested on suspicion of physically assaulting a woman and damaging her apartment. He has admitted he was “in a haze of alcohol and cocaine”.
Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Carl Philip are confirmed to attend the wedding, along with Prince Constantijn and Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands, but many others are steering clear. Isaksen speculated that foreign royal houses “are not too keen on being part of this circus”.
But with such a colourful couple now at the heart of the establishment, this lavish wedding is just the start of a dangerous high-wire act for Norway’s royal family. A recent poll indicated that 36 per cent of the public have taken a more negative view of them in the past year. The kook and the shaman could yet reduce a stately institution to a clown car.
The Telegraph, London
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