This week’s premier hate watch candidate is Rebel Royals: An Unlikely Love Story (now on Netflix), a documentary that seems destined to make all the Harry and Meghan content out there look like The Thin Blue Line. Directed by Tiger King’s Rebecca Chaiklin, the movie offers an inside look at the romance between Princess Martha Louise of Norway and “shaman to the stars” Durek Verrett – and it’s almost certainly endorsed by the participants, considering the rosy portrait it paints of the couple. Chaiklin hangs out with Martha and Durek leading up to their extravagant 2024 wedding and frames the trials and tribulations of their heavily scrutinized pairing as a story about the perseverance of love. But regardless of the authenticity of their relationship, Rebel Royals feels like PR whitewashing passing as documentary filmmaking. 

The Gist: They were brought together by woo-woo. As the daughter of the king and queen of Norway, Martha Louise lived in a transparent bubble o’ royalty where formality and modesty ruled. She claims to have “psychic abilities and healing powers,” which drew her to Durek Verrett, a Los Angeles-based “alternative therapist” (those are Wikipedia’s words) who claims to be able to mingle with spirits and heal people, and was Gwyneth Paltrow’s personal shaman. The doc shows brief clips of him directing groups of people to breathe deep while he babbles incoherently about “energy,” but what exactly he’s doing is best summed up by the following proclamation by a talking head: “I don’t understand what this guy does, but he does it!” Clear as mud.

Martha caught wind of Durek’s notoriety and reached out to him, but he blew her off for a while; eventually, he agreed to meet and the rest is history: “They didn’t tell their teams, and just announced their relationship on Instagram,” one of their associates reveals. Many believed Durek was gay – he had previously been in relationships with men – but he defines himself as “soul-sexual… I fall in love with the soul of a person.” So we watch as Martha and Durek do highly relatable things like driving around in expensive cars, visiting exotic places and hanging out in lavish homes. At first, she visited him in L.A., and appreciated how few people recognized her there. When he first visited her in Norway, it was a different story. This was a Black American man among exclusively White people, touting a big, showy personality, and who wore a kimono and cowboy boots the first time he met her parents. Her parents, who, don’t forget, are the king and queen of Norway. He wasn’t just a fish out of water, he was a fish orbiting Neptune.

As soon as their relationship was made public, the Norwegian press leapt on 

Durek like a vulture to a bloated and stinking yak carcass. Headlines labeled him a “quack” (probably true) who practiced “black magic” (probably not true; we do not see him handling cauldrons or eyes of newt) who “brainwashed” her into being with him (almost certainly not true, because her eyes weren’t all swirly like in cartoons). Thus, the villain is introduced: the tabloid press, who use the fact that the royal family’s extravagant lifestyle is taxpayer-funded to justify their nastiness. Sure, they point some legitimate skepticism at Durek’s line of work – it’s hard to argue with one talking-head Norwegian journalist’s tendency to call him a “scam artist” – but it’s one among many weaponized bad-faith criticisms aimed at the Norwegian royals that feels far more personal than professional or journalistic.

So it’s under a microscope that Durek and Martha plan their wedding. She suggests maybe something small and private, a wise choice coming from someone used to being squarely in the public eye. But he’s like nuh-uh, so they line up days of ceremonial whatnot among the gorgeous fjords of Norway. Meanwhile, we learn that Durek suffers from kidney disease and awaits a second transplant (he shares how the first was preceded by a near-death experience), and that Martha’s ex-husband, Ari Behn, was also ruthlessly scrutinized by the press before they warmed to him; they’d eventually divorce, and Martha mentions his “mental issues” before we learn that Ari died by suicide. Durek is also the subject of horrible racist comments and death threats on social media, which prompted his then-future in-laws to publicly denounce it. See, these people have real-life problems too, you know. But their love conquers all! THE END.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Rebel Royals is the scrubbiest PR scrubbing since The Baldwins. At least celeb-endorsed docs like Pamela, A Love Story and Sly show their subjects as capable of some self-reflection.

Performance Worth Watching: Durek seems destined to be another Netflix-endorsed wacko-caricature who says a bunch of outrageous nonsense and is ripe to be memed from here to his hometown of Andromeda.

Memorable Dialogue: “It’s disgusting! (Makes gagging and barfing noises)” – Durek, discussing how Norwegians value modesty and humility

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: As hagiographic knobjobs go, Rebel Royals is especially egregious. It’s an Instagram reel bloated to 95 minutes. Sure, there are moments when Chaiklin pretends to be making an actual documentary – she briefly addresses a sexual misconduct claim against Durek, and shows him hocking a $222 medallion that he claimed would heal COVID-19 – but anything the subjects might deem unflattering is glossed over and dropped like a hot potato before getting back to banal footage of our couple discussing “what the astrologer told us” about what time of day the wedding should take place, and vague assertions about the power of their love. The film’s inability to directly question Durek or Martha about these issues – the most that happens is a shrug or two in reference to “mistakes” that were made – or inquire deeper on his claim that he’s a reptile-person from outer space, is a clear violation of the norms of diligent documentary filmmaking. There are so many compelling angles to take on this story, and Chaiklin opts for none of them.

So we’re stuck with a simplistic, hollow insistence that a humble princess who lives in a palace and believes she’s psychic and a totally normal guy who mumbled New Age invocations in the general direction of Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina egg just want to live their ridiculous lives like everyone else. I’d never say they don’t deserve that, but by that token, neither do they deserve a feature-length documentary about it on the world’s biggest streaming service. The antagonist of the story is the press, members of whom say they’re just speaking truth to power, but, what with all the petty name-calling and muckraking, look like assholes. I’m tempted to say Martha comes off as fairly likable, but then my inner skeptic – which broke out into hives 47 times while watching this thing – reminded me that she’s almost certainly the product of decades of media training that taught her to tamp down the nuttier components of her personality and make her public-facing self as bland as possible. 

Within the context of the film’s ruthless grandstanding, its attempt to further normalize its subjects by detailing their struggles – i.e., the aftermath of suicide, chronic ailments – are little more than manipulations for our sympathy. Nobody asks why Durek can’t heal himself, or why he pushes back against mainstream medicine until he needs regular dialysis. Nobody asks Martha why she doesn’t heal him, or how she feels about leaving behind her royal duties – which seem like a burden, frankly – due to public and family pressure, so she can marry this guy. (I’m willing to interpret that as reasonable proof that their love is one of the few things in their lives that doesn’t appear to be a sham.) Nobody asks them the questions we really want answered, which renders Rebel Royals little more than empty posturing, PR spin and drivel.

Our Call: “Martha, what’s it like being married to a space reptile?” See, it’s not that hard. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.