Katy Perry Says Taylor Swift Tried to 'Assassinate My Character' With 'Bad Blood'

The singer first addressed their very public feud during "Carpool Karaoke" with James Corden, a move she explained in her new interview with NME.

"Well, James Corden makes me and the whole world feel very safe," Perry told the mag (via Refinery29). "No one has asked me about my side of the story, and there are three sides of every story: one, two, and the truth."

"I mean, I'm not Buddha -- things irritate me," she said. "I wish that I could turn the other cheek every single time, but I'm also not a pushover, you know? Especially when someone tries to assassinate my character with little girls. That's so messed up!"

When asked about her longtime collaborate Max Martin producing the song for Swift, Perry said: "I can't speak for him, but he didn't know [who 'Bad Blood' was about]. I'm not supposed to tell him what he can and can't do. I'm very fair; I'm super-duper fair and I'm not one of those people who's like, 'You can't do that because I don't like that person'. Just, like, you do you, make your own choices. I love Max. I've been working with Max my whole career. I'm not his mother and he was fine before I met him, you know what I'm saying? He'll be fine continuing."

The feud between the singers started when Taylor told Rolling Stone that her chart-topping single "Bad Blood" was about a fellow pop star who backstabbed her. "She basically tried to sabotage an entire arena tour," Swift said back in 2014, never naming Perry. "She tried to hire a bunch of people out from under me."

"It's about 3 backing dancers that went on tour with her tour and they asked me before they went on tour if they could go," Perry confirmed on Corden's show. "And I was like, yeah of course, I'm not on a record cycle and get the work and she's great but I will be on a record cycle in about a year, so be sure to put a 30-day contingency in your contract so you can get out if you want to join me when I say I'm going back on."

"So that year came up and I texted all of them because I'm very close with them and said, look, just FYI, I'm about to start, I want to put the word out there," Katy said. "They said OK, we're going to talk to management about it and they did and they got fired."

Perry said she attempted to phone Swift herself and hash it out, but "she wouldn't speak to me."

"I think personally that women together, not divided, and none of this petty bullshit, women together will heal the world," she added.