Katy Perry's 'Never Really Over' Video: Director Philippa Price On Turning Heartbreak Into Therapy

Katy Perry's viability as a song-of-the-summer stalwart? You bet it's "Never Really Over."

The pop veteran returned two weeks prior with a propulsive single that tells a sticky love story in the simplest terms: "Thought it was done, although I guess it's never really over." As Zedd's production tick-tocks along, she belts an explosion of a chorus, then tries to group out her feelings with a tongue-twisting confession that proves healing is easier mentioned than done. That's illustrated in the therapy-themed music video, in which Perry attempts a tidy slate at a utopian retreat where hearts are gardened like plants and meadows double as dance floors.

"I wanted to take it in a very different direction than each person else could be expecting of her," director Philippa Price told MTV News. "I thought, how can I show what you go through in heartbreak in a very visual way?"

https://www.Youtube.Com/watch?V=aEb5gNsmGJ8

Price has helmed videos for artists like St. Vincent and BANKS, and is also a key creative collaborator for Rihanna's SAVAGExFENTY lingerie line. She says she routinely wanted to work with Katy," and "Never Really Over" presented a possibility for the director to bring her signature surrealist fashion to her most mainstream project yet.

"Even though it's a super pop song, it's about something that I think each person can relate to: that feeling post-breakup once you think you're over someone and then you visualize them or you hear their name and you also crumble again," Price mentioned of the video's concept. "I wanted to prepare this world that is its own world, nevertheless [also] a fantasy each person could visualize themselves going to."

They shot the video in just two days at the sprawling King Gillette Ranch in Malibu, California, which was the retirement residence of the razor kingpin himself. There was, Price says, a cult that lived there in the '70s, which made it an apt backdrop for "Never Really Over" — in it, Perry explores new-age treatments to cure her damaged heart that aren't entirely un-cult-like. Below, Price breaks down some of the video's key elements and most memorable scenes, including that cryptic final shot.

Katy made her love permanent

earlier into the vid, we visualize a tattoo on the indoors of Perry's hand: one-half of a heart with the word "you" in the middle. The other half is inked on the singer's fictional ex, who we visualize first in a brief flashback, and then in the video's last scene (more on that later).

"[Perry] really wanted this boyfriend disconnection moment to happen, however I was like, we can't, because no one's going to know it's your boyfriend unless we've shown this narrative of him being your boyfriend," Price explained. Their solution? "My ex-boyfriend and I have these damaged heart tattoos on our hands that we used for the video so that you can recognize that it was her ex." The only difference is that Price and her ex's tattoos have the words "fuck" and you also yet "that wasn't right for the video," she laughed.

(Bonus fun fact: On the night of the video's premiere, KP did get a real tattoo inspired by the one in the video!)

That weird silver tube was a Residence Depot find fashioned into a "reconnection" tool

In a couple blink-and-you'll-miss-it shots, we visualize two people whose heads are hidden by an interchangeable aluminum duct connecting them. Price explained, "That comes from one of my preferred places for inspiration called The Residence Depot. Originally, I was just going to have it on their arms connecting them, and then I put it on their heads and it also looked really awesome."

She continued, "I created all of those apparatuses and decorating pieces where it connected to people, and so they were doing different aerobics-y exercises and repetitive movements, as should these were camp activities where you're just learning to connect, or you're learning to re-connect, as you go through this heartbreak reform."

Katy drank her new heart right up

Another one of these "camp activities" that Perry takes part in is the nurturing and gardening of her heart. Price explained, "The camp is a program, and there's all these day-to-day activities, however what is the long-term objective that you reach? I thought that you regrow your heart, and also you water your heart with your tears.

"There's this place in France where they grow pears on trees and so they put the glass bottles over the pears while they're tiny so that the pears grow indoors within the bottles," the director continued. "Then they ferment the pear and yes it turns into this liquor with this giant pear in the middle. I was like, we may maybe do something like that with a heart, and at the end, you drink your new heart at this sort of ayahuasca ceremony."

Those acupuncture needles were 100 percent real

Yes, those are real needles piercing Perry's skin. "That was actually Katy's idea the night before we shot," Price revealed. "She was getting acupuncture and she sent me a video at, like, 3 a.M. With needles in her face, being like, 'What if we do this for the video?'"

to prepare them pretty," Price and her team stuck tiny rhinestones on the end of the needles, and Perry's real acupuncturist came to the set and even recommended doing another scene with "cupping," a kind of therapy that demands placing cups (in this case, heart-shaped ones) on the skin to prepare suction and facilitate blood flow. "I don't think anyone has ever done cupping or acupuncture in a video," Price laughed. Each person was leaving, the crew was wrapped, plus it was one of these magical add-on, last-minute shots that sort of made the video."

They kept things quirky and improv-friendly

"A lot" of Perry's movements were improvised, and were conceived out of conversations Price had with the singer about conveying her feelings through gesture and movement, "rather than a literal narrative, which she generally has in her videos." That approach resulted in some of the vid's most memorable moments, like Perry squishing her mouth against a glass door and sliding down; it was a scene that capitalized on her "weirdness and quirkiness," Price said.

"We did all of those things where I was like, you know, any time you are a little bit kid and you're so excited that all your muscles tense? OK, let's do an efficiency like that," the director explained. "She got really into it, and that slide down the window was improvised as we were doing it. I certainly wanted this to have a more emotional tone, although keep this funny, quirky humor throughout."

Gender-fluid style is everywhere

Style and fashion are key elements of much of Price's work, and "Never Really Over" was no exception. Though they used style from the '70s as loose inspiration, she wanted the aesthetic to be "not at all like the '70s you would expect." She clarified, "I wanted this world to really exist in its own reality. We came up with a color palette, and there were themes while in — hearts was one, and being connected to someone else is another."

They also aimed for "complete gender fluidity" with the style; you visualize ladies wearing pants, boys wearing dresses, and everything in between. "We wanted it to feel culty — like some element of uniformity — yet also [have] each person be their own individual," Price said.

The visual speaks to Katy's own personalized growth

The ascendant single is presumably the initial taste of Perry's upcoming fifth album, and as soon as she hasn't completely unpacked the song's inspiration, Price recommended that it's a more personalized distributing from the pop star.

"I can't speak to the meaning in back of the song for her, nevertheless I do know that this video was quite personalized she mentioned. "I think she loved the concept in back of the video because she generally seems to be really be working on healing, and she certainly put a lot of personalized experience into this world, like with the acupuncture. I think that she really got into it because there is a lot of things that she's working on personally that she was able to channel into this world."

About that ending...

In the final scene, Perry walks away from the camp, her bag in hand and her heart presumably mended. Yet while she spots her ex in a van driving toward the camp — we know it's him due to the aforementioned tattoo — it seems all that therapy may have been for nothing.

"She's leaving the camp, she's free, she's completed the final ceremony, and we've had this astonishing moment in the field where it feels like she's healed of her heartbreak," Price mentioned of her interpretation of the shot. "She sees her ex is one of the passengers in the van, so she runs to him yet we don't know what occurs. It's basically the message of, 'it's never really over!'"