A year or so ago, when we last checked in on the flaky Princess Märtha Louise of Norway and her (arguably) even flakier beau, a black, bald, bisexual shaman from Los Angeles named Durek Verrett, they were about to be married in very splashy, un-Norwegian style. It was a destination wedding — a gala three-day affair culminating in the actual ceremony, which took place on the shore of the remote, picturesque Geirangerfjord. As I noted at the time, Märtha Louise and Durek had obviously taken a page from Harry and Meghan, monetizing their undying love by inking a lucrative deal with Netflix. Under the deal, the streaming service acquired exclusive rights to film their nuptials — an arrangement that provoked consternation in the Norwegian media, which are used to being permitted to cover such royal occasions for free. Now Netflix’s documentary about the wedding is out. It’s called Rebel Royals: An Unlikely Love Story, and the director, Rebecca Chaikin, managed to stretch the thing out to a full 90 minutes. As entertainingly wacky as these two are — both of them profess to have psychic abilities and healing powers — 90 minutes is an awfully long time to spend with them. (RELATED: Märtha and Durek Cash In on Their Wedding)
The wedding itself doesn’t come until the end. Before we get around to it, we’re introduced to the principals. We see Märtha Louise and Durek at home (they used to live in L.A.; now they’re in Norway, cohabiting with the three daughters she had with her first husband). We see them engaging in ordinary domestic activities. We watch as they talk into the camera about themselves. Durek, who says he is a “sixth-generation shaman,” explains matter-of-factly that he has a “strong relationship to the spirit world” and is “the shaman to the people,” whatever that means. Märtha Louise says that she first met Durek because a mutual friend told her that they both exuded the same kind of energy. Also, both of them could “shift energies around in other people’s bodies.”
Some might ue that Durek saw an opportunity to heighten his profile and jumped at it.
At first Durek was Märtha Louise’s “gay friend.” He still comes across as extremely gay — a veritable RuPaul Doppelgänger who’s over-the-top flamboyant and who obviously regards himself as super fabulous. He tells us that when they met, “I was single, but I was also friends-with-benefits kind of thing.” Translation: he slept with lots of guys. Nonetheless, he and Märtha Louise ended up becoming a couple. Some might argue that Durek saw in this flighty dimbulb an opportunity to heighten his profile and jumped at it. Durek himself accounts for the romance by declaring that he’s “soul-sexual,” meaning that he’s “attracted to the soul of the person. … I don’t see myself as straight or gay.” He could be with either a man or a woman. “Or it could be another being from another planet. It’s about the energy that they exude.” Märtha Louise, the less loquacious of the two, says simply: “I saw him and I was like, I know you already.” So she moved to L.A. to be with him. “I loved living in L.A.,” she gushes. (How much did Norwegian taxpayers shell out for that?)
Eventually, they became engaged. “Being a shaman, marrying into the royal family, it’s just very, very surreal,” volunteers Durek, who reports that when he met Märtha Louise’s parents, King Harald and Queen Sonja, “I was wearing a kimono and cowboy boots.” (Throughout this documentary, we see Märtha Louise in modest outfits and Durek in one ridiculous costume after another.) He alleges that he’s been disappointed by the royals’ attitude toward him. “They don’t want a shaman who’s black and bisexual marrying their princess,” he proclaims. “It was like: ‘Why are you with this guy?’ ‘You can’t slouch in your chair.’” As far as they were concerned, “everything I did was wrong.” He even asserts — and this one has infuriated a lot of Norwegians — that until he came along, the King, Queen, and Crown Prince (Märtha Louise’s brother) “didn’t know what racism is.” Why does Märtha Louise let him say such things? Her infatuation with him, it seems, is almost as intense as his infatuation with himself. To be sure, Durek insists that he adores her. His big challenge, he avers, is this: “How can I be myself and also blend in with her life as a princess?” The whole business, he contends, is frustrating for him because “aside from being a royal, she’s just Märtha to me.”
As the great day approaches, we see Durek and Märtha Louise sitting at a large table, planning their wedding with the help of several individuals who go unidentified. Durek is clearly running the show, and the adoring Märtha Louise, who seems never to be anything less than delighted by him, is perfectly happy to let him call the shots. He has strong views about how the locations for the wedding weekend should be decorated and what the dress code should be. (He describes himself as the “fashion police.”) After being informed that the best time for the wedding ceremony is 3 p.m., he announces that 3 p.m. simply won’t do, because an astrologer told him the vows should be exchanged at noon. (It has something to do with him being a Scorpio.) The other people at the table bite their tongues.
From time to time, Royal Rebels cuts away from Märtha Louise and Durek to give us glimpses of the royal family. We see formally clad guests filing into a dinner at the palace; we see the King’s Guard marching stiffly past the palace gates. The obvious idea is to depict Norway as if it were some kind of quaint, stuffy 19th-century Ruritania, and to contrast it with the modern, free-wheeling, fun-loving California lifestyle of our two zany New Age rebels. In reality, of course, Norway is very much a modern country. The real contrast here is that most of its royals, and most of its populace generally, are pretty sane, whereas the princess and her shaman are just plain nuts.
I can’t say that I have a great deal of sympathy for the Norwegian royals. But both the King and Queen are getting along in years and have had more than their share of scrapes and stews and scandals. For all that they’ve been through, however, they surely could never have imagined this preposterous figure worming his way into their lives and dragging them and their country — in the most humiliating way and to a totally unprecedented degree — into the international headlines. I must say that, to Chaikin’s credit, this documentary isn’t entirely a celebration of the princess and the shaman and a putdown of the purportedly racist royals: it includes an interview with a Norwegian reporter who suggests that Durek is “maybe a scam artist.” (Ya think?) Then there’s a clip from a podcast in which Durek discusses his sex life with Märtha. Also, we hear him pitching a so-called “light bringer” that promises to “remove COVID from your system.” (He has previously claimed to be able to cure cancer.) We’re even treated to an audio tape in which he talks about performing oral sex on one of the clients who pays him for his shaman services.
Oh, the wedding. Yes, we get full coverage. We see Märtha Louise — and Durek! — getting made up at their hotel. She puts on her dress and tiara. As he walks from the hotel to the site of the wedding, a bunch of people surround him, holding up white bedsheets so that the paparazzi can’t snap pictures of him. (That would put the kibosh on the deal for exclusive photo rights that the couple made with Britain’s Hello! Magazine.) Inside a huge tent on the bank of the fjord, the couple exchange vows. The entire ceremony is conducted in English by a woman who heaps grotesque praise on both the bride and groom. Everyone then returns from the tent to the hotel, where the newlyweds dance and give speeches. It’s all very expensive-looking, but the mood is carefree and lighthearted. Aside from the fact that she’s a princess and they’re both weirdos, this might be a wedding on any reality show.
Rebel Royals began streaming on September 16. It immediately caused a ruckus in Norway, largely because of Durek’s indiscreet and unflattering comments about King Harald and Queen Sonja, but also because the inane spiritualist pretensions of Märtha Louise, which had been the stuff of Norwegian gossip rags for years, had now been captured in a full-length film that was being streamed into households around the world. (As of this writing, it’s the #1 film on Netflix.) Aftenposten, Norway’s newspaper of record, reacted to this national embarrassment by calling for Märtha Louise to be stripped of her royal title. In fact, this documentary is, for not a few Norwegians, so thoroughly mortifying that I can imagine a sizable percentage of the population deciding that it’s high time that the constitutional monarchy be ditched altogether in favor of a republic. Then again, just after writing the above sentence, I watched a news program on which several commentators expressed the view that the Norwegian people would, on the contrary, rally around the King and Queen in this moment of distress. In any event, one thing’s for certain: this story won’t go away in Norway any time soon. It will be fun to see how it develops.
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