Durek Verrett
Durek Verrett is an American alternative therapist, who since 2024 is married to Princess Märtha Louise of Norway, and a self-professed shaman practicing neoshamanism. He has been widely described by Norwegian media as a con man and conspiracy theorist.
Verrett promotes New Age–influenced practices and his claims have been widely criticized as pseudoscientific, including that children get cancer because they want it, that chemotherapy is ineffective and financially motivated, and that casual sex attracts subterranean spirits. He identifies as a reptilian, regards 5G technology a conspiracy, and claims to have known about the September 11 attacks two years before they happened, but chose not to intervene.
Verrett's relationship with the princess and his statements have drawn widespread criticism in Norway, such that she relinquished her royal duties to separate their commercial activities from the monarchy. Verrett is not royal and holds no title.
Controversies surrounding Märtha Louise and Verrett, along with the Marius Borg Høiby affair, have been linked to a significant decline in public support for the Norwegian monarchy.
Background
Durek Verrett was born Derek David Verrett on November 17, 1974, in Sacramento, California, and grew up in Foster City. He legally changed his name to Durek Verrett in 2014. Much of the information about his origins or childhood is uncertain.His parents divorced when he was three, and he lived with his father, David Benjamin Verrett, and his stepmother. In a 2019 interview to Vanity Fair, Verrett claimed that his father was a wealthy architect with a private plane and domestic servants. However, in an interview to Se og Hør, his mother claimed that Verrett's family was not as wealthy as he has claimed. His sister has defended Verrett and described their upbringing as fine.
Verrett's ancestors were enslaved in the New Orleans area at least since the early 19th century, where they continued to live and where Verrett's father was born. Durek Verrett's great uncle was the jazz guitarist Harrison Verrett, a brother in law of Fats Domino. In the mid 20th century Verrett's grandparents moved to California with their children. Verrett has claimed that his mother, Sheilah G. Farmer, who goes by the alias Veruschka Urquhart, is of Norwegian-West Indian descent, although he has alternately described her as being of Native American heritage, and he has also claimed "she was white." He has sometimes claimed that his father was of African and Haitian origin, while at other times stating his father was "Native American Blackfoot Indian."
On his personal website from 2011 to 2020 he claimed to be a third-generation shaman. Since 2020, he changed his claim and began describing himself as a sixth-generation shaman.
Career
Verrett dropped out of high school.Verrett has claimed to have been initiated spiritually by an American woman who calls herself "Princess Susana von Radić of Croatia"
Before he began calling himself a shaman, Verrett worked as a model and an actor.
At age 27, Verrett claims he had a near-death experience which was a pivotal "rite of passage to become a shaman." In 2018, Verrett stated in multiple interviews that his near-death experience happened in Los Angeles, California, where a friend drove him to a local hospital. However, since 2019, Verrett has changed the story, stating that it occurred in a Belize jungle while he was with a medicine woman, and that he was transported to a hospital there via ambulance. In all versions of the story, Verrett claims he underwent emergency tracheotomy and sternotomy.
In 2018 and 2019, Verrett claimed that he worked at Shamir Medical Center in Israel for several months during 1998, where he said he treated children for cancer using shamanistic methods. However, in 2019, the hospital's Human Resources department stated that Verrett never worked at the institution.
In 2019, Verrett released a book titled Spirit Hacking which was set to be published in Norway. However, major publisher Cappelen Damm dropped the book a week prior to its scheduled publication over concerns about its content. The book was later released by a small publisher. In the book, Verrett advocates numerous "absurd medical theories." He claims children get cancer because they want it, and suggests that chemotherapy doesn't work and is only given to cancer patients because the doctors make money from it.
He writes that casual sex attracts subterranean spirits that make an impression on the inside of women's vaginas; he also sells exercises to "clean out" said vaginas. Verrett says that he can "turn atoms" and reduce age. Cancer experts called Verrett's views on cancer "dangerous." Major newspaper Dagbladet described the book as "the ravings of a lunatic." Verdens Gang called the book "nonsense, garbage and dirty talk," and said it is an unoriginal "rehash of the standard repertoire of the most cynical part of the alternative culture."
Although Verrett publicly identified as gay prior to 2019, Vanity Fair wrote about him identifying as bisexual since meeting Norway's Princess Märtha Louise and their activities to promote his brand of new age shamanism in celebrity circles.
Verrett claims that his "true mission is to bring the ancient practice of shamanism to the mainstream, helping people to 'get lit' by cultivating love and acceptance of themselves and others." Verrett also claims to be a reincarnated Pharaoh from Egypt.
In 2019, Verrett claimed that he had knowledge of the September 11 attacks two years before they happened, but that he chose not to intervene because he believes that everyone must "accept their destiny." Verrett has also claimed that he has risen from the dead.
In 2021, Verrett stated that he considers himself to be a reptilian, and asserted that, "I'm a hybrid species of reptilian and Andromeda, and I also hold the energies of the ancient spirits from the old world. There have been lies told about our species that I want to address. We are a cluster of beings, that means that we've come here to create structures that help people to come into liberation. Reptilians are here to shake up the system in a big way." According to extremism researcher John Færseth, Verrett's ideas about being a reptilian are based on the Reptilian conspiracy theory advocated by British anti-Semite David Icke. Verrett has stated that he considers the 5G technology to be a conspiracy by "those who enslave the planet."
In December 2023, Verrett posted a controversial video on Instagram in which he claimed that demonic beings can inhabit children and torment them. Therefore, he advised parents to speak directly and loudly at troubled, aggressive, and acting-out children, commanding the dark spirits within them to come "into the light." Many observers consider Verrett's parenting advice to be a harmful encouragement of exorcism.
MSN included Verrett as one of "20 famous conspiracy theorists" in a 2024 article.
Legal problems
In 1991, Verrett was convicted of felony arson and trespassing and sentenced to five years of imprisonment in California after he illegally organized a party in an unoccupied house that was set on fire and burned to the ground. Verrett has stated that he served one year in prison before being released on parole.In July 2022, Verrett advertised and sold a medallion that he claimed cures COVID-19. The Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman declared Verrett's undocumented claims to be a violation of Norwegian law. As a result, in 2023, Verrett ceased selling that product and began selling another medallion for over 2,000 Norwegian kroner that he claims can cure dogs of various ailments, which has been criticized by the Norwegian Veterinary Association as not based on science.
Personal life
In 2005, Verrett married Zaneta Marzalkova, a Los Angeles resident of Czech nationality, when she was 21 years old. Verrett claimed that Marzalkova used him to obtain a green card and reported her to immigration authorities in 2008. She filed for divorce afterward, and they were divorced in 2009.From 2007 to 2015, Verrett had a fiancé, a masseur named Hank Greenberg, who was also his business partner. In 2012, Verrett and Greenberg started an Indiegogo crowdfunding page to raise money for Verrett's kidney transplant in which they stated that Verrett is HIV positive. In interviews given to Se og Hør in 2019, Greenberg described Verrett's true nature as manipulative and dangerous, and stated that Verrett has a "brainwashed" cult of followers where "his word is law."
For several years between 2012 and 2017, Verrett lived periodically with his then-manager Tiana Griego, who said in an interview with Se og Hør, "Durek controlled my whole life. It was as if he became jealous of anything that stole his attention. I was not allowed to start a serious romantic relationship or raise my son. It was all about Durek."
Sexual assault allegations
In October 2024, the Norwegian magazine Se og Hør published an article in which Durek Verrett was accused of sexual assault. The accusation came from Joakim Boström, a former representative of Verrett, who claimed that during a shamanistic session Verrett had inappropriately touched his genital area without consent. The magazine identified Verrett by name and presented the accusation as part of a broader series of reports on alleged boundary-crossing behavior in his professional practice.Verrett denied the allegations and argued that Se og Hør had failed to substantiate them. Through his legal representative, he also objected to the publication of a nude photograph of him that had appeared in Se og Hør in September 2024, stating that the image had been taken privately many years earlier and never intended for publication.
In March 2025, the Norwegian Press Complaints Commission ruled that Se og Hør had breached good journalistic practice on two counts. The publication of a nude photograph was deemed a violation of Verrett's privacy, and the article on sexual assault was found to rely on a single, uncorroborated source in breach of standards for verification. PFU stressed that serious allegations against a named individual require more thorough investigation. A minority of the commission disagreed regarding the assault story, but the majority concluded that Se og Hør had acted in breach of press ethics on both issues.
On the same day of the release of the Netflix-documentary Rebel Royals in September 2025, a 46-minute recording surfaced on YouTube and Instagram, featuring voice messages from Verrett to former MTV star Eric Nies, in which he appeared to admit to engaging in sexual acts with multiple clients during healing sessions. The recordings, originally reported by the Norwegian magazine Se og Hør in 2024, include Verrett acknowledging that he had "crossed boundaries."