The Mail's Royal experts react to MORE fictional portrayals of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle across TV and film on ACTING ROYAL
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are no strangers to cameras.
The Duke of Sussex, 40, was brought out of the Lindo Wing at St Mary's Hospital to hordes of paparazzi just hours after he was born in 1984, while the Duchess, 43, opted for a glittering career in television and spent seven years starring in the legal drama Suits.
But not all of their appearances on the silver screen have been particularly welcomed by the couple, who stepped down from frontline royal duties in 2020.
From The Windsors to Spitting Image and South Park, the Mail's Royal experts sat down to react to fictional representations of Harry and Meghan across TV and film on the new series Acting Royal.
Rebecca English, the Daily Mail's Royal Editor, was joined by Richard Eden, the Daily Mail's Diary Editor, and Charlotte Griffiths, the Editor at Large of the Mail on Sunday, for the second episode of the hit show, which is available on the Daily Mail Royal YouTube channel.
Spitting Image (2021)
First broadcast in 1984, Spitting Image was a British satirical television puppet show which often featured (and made fun of) the Royal Family.
In an episode from 2021, an overjoyed Meghan shows her husband Harry an invite to the 'Obama Foundation Awards Gala'.
The Duchess explains that the event may be her 'chance to convince' Michelle Obama that she can 'play the lead' in the blockbuster movie based on the former First Lady's biography Becoming.
'This really did happen,' Charlotte said. 'They really did try and go to events in Hollywood to try and get Meghan a job in the industry.'
Later in the episode, the puppet-version of Harry attends the glitzy event, suggesting to Disney CEO Bob Iger that Meghan would be 'great' in the role of Michelle. 'I do love resuscitating has-been's careers but I'm not a f***ing magician,' Bob replies.
'That's exactly what happened,' Charlotte said. 'Harry went up to Bob Iger and said, "Meghan would be great in your next film." I actually can't believe it happened now.
'God bless Spitting Image. They just get these things so right,' she added.
Prince William (2002)
Set at Balmoral Castle in 1997, the film opens with a young Prince William and Prince Harry finding out their mother Princess Diana has passed away in a car crash.
The boys are seen scrambling around the royal residence looking for someone to explain what's going on.
'Has something bad happened?' a young Harry, played by Eddie Cooper, asks a staff member.
The princes are eventually told by their father Prince Charles that Diana 'is gone' and they collapse into his arms crying.
'This clearly didn't happen,' Rebecca said. 'As we know from Harry himself, both he and William were asleep and their father woke them up.
'In Spare, Harry talked about how his father did impart the news to them personally but they didn't get any hugs and that's what they needed as children.'
She added: 'There are things that are very basically wrong such as the idea that William and Harry were woken up by noise in Balmoral Castle and staff had warned them that something was going on.
'My understanding certainly from Harry's own account is that's not what happened,' she added. 'They were woken up personally by their father.'
Harry In Court (2024)
While watching the court reenactment clip from Sky News, Rebecca described it as 'one of my favourite depictions of Harry on film ever.'
'The trouble is in the UK we don't actually allow cameras in our courtrooms apart from very rare circumstances which is a judge, for example, delivering a sentencing in a particularly unique case.'
'This is one of Harry's many court cases,' Richard explained to the cameras. 'I think this was one of his cases against the Daily Mirror newspaper where he had been pursuing them over illegal methods used in the past. It was a case which he largely won.
'So this is an actor repeating Harry's words to give a sense of what it is was like when he was giving testimony in court.
'I think this actor frankly was more impressive than Harry himself,' Richard added. 'I think the way he speaks and carries himself.
'I'm sure his testimony is much more convincing than Harry's actually was in court.'
Saturday Night Live (2018)
Just hours after Harry married Meghan at St George's Chapel on May 19, 2018, Saturday Night Live put their own spin on the royal wedding in their season finale.
'What's up? It's your boy Harry Windsor aka Ron Sleaz-ley,' comedian Mikey Day says as he stands in a ballroom in military uniform.
'When I knew Harry very briefly, he was actually like this,' Charlotte revealed. 'He was really fun and really silly and he would be like, "what's up?"
'So spot on, I would say.'
Adding her own opinion, Rebecca said: '[Day] almost had an Australian twang to the way he spoke I thought in that.
'This clip depicts what we all would have loved to have seen in person and no one had a chance to which is what it was like inside the wedding of Harry and Meghan.
'The one thing that did ring true is the Harry character,' she added, 'wearing a very lifelike uniform, I have to say.'
Spitting Image (1993)
At the 'height of the breakdown of Prince Charles and Princess Diana's relationship', Spitting Image released a skit featuring puppet versions of Harry and William 'joyriding' with their aide.
After crashing into the gates of Buckingham Palace, puppet William tells the police officer: 'It's not our fault.'
To which Harry adds: 'We come from a broken home.'
Richard found the crash to be 'a bit tasteless' given what we know happened to the boys' mother Princess Diana four years later in 1997.
But drawing on her 20 years of experience reporting on the royals, Rebecca said: 'An actual fact, they had ordered a member of staff to take them out joyriding.
'This does tie in with what some of the police protection officers said from the time is that when they got caught out after crashing into the gates at Buckingham Palace, they were like, "oh no, you can't blame us. We're just poor little princes from a broken home."
'Very funny, very smart, pretty cruel, but according to people at the time, pretty spot on too.'
The Windsors (2020)
Introducing The Windsors as the 'greatest royal spoof programme', Charlotte said she has 'been addicted to it for years.
First broadcast on Channel 4 in 2016, it is a parody of the British Royal Family and the House of Windsor.
In the episode watched by the Mail's Royal experts, Prince Harry, played by Richard Goulding, is gifted a colouring book to which he exclaims: 'I love this series and I am getting really good at staying inside the lines.'
'I love The Windsors' Rebecca said. 'Don't just take my word for it, this has royal approval.
'The programme is adored by the staff within Buckingham Palace, I can promise you that.
'I know it has even been watched by more than one member of the Royal Family as well.'
She added: 'It is cult viewing within both the Royal Family and Buckingham Palace because they can see how genuinely funny it is.'
South Park (2023)
Broadcast in February 2023, The Worldwide Privacy Tour episode of depicts a visit to the town of South Park by the 'Prince of Canada' and his wife, who say they are seeking privacy and seclusion.
Arriving on the set of Good Morning Canada with a book to promote, the prince holds aloft a placard reading 'We want privacy', while the princess's banner reads: 'Stop looking at us.'
'I remember when this came out,' Charlotte said, 'it really summed up what everyone was thinking about Meghan and Harry but weren't yet particularly saying so much which is the hypocrisy of Megxit and leaving the Royal Family.
Agreeing with Charlotte, Rebecca said: 'The South Park Worldwide Privacy Tour episode was actually a seminal piece of royal reporting.
'It summed up in one kind of devastatingly brilliant episode how much their lives had changed, how much Harry and Meghan had fallen in public opinion.
'I would argue that it did more to seal their reputation with the general public than any piece of journalism that we have seen in the last few years.
'At the time Harry and Meghan tried to put a brave face on it and suggest that they understood as public figures they found it funny and they should take it in their stride.
'But from everything we heard, they were absolutely devastated by it because it had cut through with the public in a way that we had not seen anything else have.
'The makers of the cartoon really got to the crux of what people were feeling that this couple were storming out of the Royal Family because they said they couldn't handle the public attention and needed more privacy at the same time as effectively selling themselves on a global stage to the highest bidder.
'It captured that hypocrisy brilliantly,' she added.
Richard said: 'Even in America, his adopted home, he has been someone who is, let's be frank about this, being laughed at on television programmes.
'I'm not sure that's what Harry and Meghan envisioned at all when they moved to the USA.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
15 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Influencers are killing the radio DJ – and it's got to stop
At the end of last year, the death of DJ Johnnie Walker reminded us of something lost. I don't mean simply that we had lost a terrific broadcaster, but that his death marked the end of an era. Walker, a trooper, had presented his show until nearly the end of his life, despite being desperately ill. You could argue that working was, for him, a necessary distraction, but you also got the sense that he was doing it for the listeners. Among Walker's gifts as a presenter was his ability to share his musical passions: he was not some gushy and unrigorous fanboy, but a discerning expert who knew exactly how to distil his knowledge. Knowledge, though, is now a dirty word. The musical nous of DJs, not to mention the broadcasting skills of those who have trained on degree courses or learnt their craft on the job (often in now-denuded local radio), seems to matter less than marketability and the building of the brand. All hail, then, the rise of the social influencer DJ. Except this, to me, goes against the spirit of radio – and it seems that a lot of people agree. At the end of last week, there was a certain amount of outrage when it was announced that former Made in Chelsea cast member Sophie Habboo would join her husband and fellow Made in Chelsea alumnus Jamie Laing on Radio 1 's Going Home show. According to The Sun, social media was ablaze. One post proclaimed: 'There is something really gross, about two such privileged and independently wealthy (the Laings) given access to prime time national radio shows over people who have trained and studied for years in media.' Another pleaded: 'Please get some good DJs back in the drive time slot. It's getting embarrassing.' The BBC's decision to recruit Habboo is obvious enough, and the same is true of 25-year-old influencer GK Barry, who was recruited by Radio 1 recently. Their impact is extraordinary: their tentacles are able to reach the young and impressionable, and they offer cross-platform marketing (for example promoting their wares to their millions of followers). It also makes sense that radio bosses would be looking to the podcasting space for lucrative new hires: both Habboo and Laing co-host one of the UK's most popular podcasts, NewlyWeds, while GK Barry hosts the top-charting podcast Saving Grace. These stars have proven to be charismatic on a mic and have a highly transferable audience at their fingertips. What's more, I imagine that they offer a boon to commercial stations' advertising departments whose clients want to be associated with the lifestyle cult these influencers develop around them. In a way, this is nothing new. DJs were the original influencers, prescribing their tastes to audiences and thus shaping the buying habits of the public and making or breaking emerging artists. This is linked to the idea of the DJ as a personality, something that developed in Britain from the late 1960s, first with the introduction of Radio 1 and then the growth of commercial radio. This was the era when Noel Edmonds, Tony Blackburn and, alas, Jimmy Savile were treated like gods, and their fame was sometimes greater than the pop stars whose discs they spun. This era is now irrevocably tainted for obvious reasons, but you cannot deny that it also gave us some of the most extraordinarily talented DJs of all time: Annie Nightingale, John Peel, Terry Wogan and Kenny Everett. The last two of these prove that being a good radio broadcaster is not always down to musical knowledge or taste. Here were personalities, and in the case of Everett, a personality who took the seemingly sober task of being a disc jockey and turned it into something that would not look out of place among the surrealists. In an era where radio conversation is often dominated by cliché, a unique and strange voice such as Everett's is sorely needed. But we also need the musos. When I was growing up, my taste was moulded by DJs such as Peel, Dave Fanning on Virgin and, especially Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley on Radio 1's Evening Session – a pair without ego who, thanks to their carefully controlled enthusiasm, provided the best music education I could have wished for. Hüsker Dü, the Sugarcubes, Belly, the Auteurs…bands who aren't much discussed today, but whose music has aged incredibly well. Lamacq is now on BBC 6 Music, a station that is treated, quite rightly, like a national treasure (remember the public outcry following former director-general Mark Thompson's strategy review in 2010 which deemed its independent thought and extensive and unusual playlist surplus to requirements?). But DJs like Lamacq are an increasing rarity – a former NME journalist who got his break on pirate radio, a voice who you knew had done his time scouring the pubs and clubs of the nation in search of musical excellence. It's hard to imagine Jamie Laing and Sophie Habboo doing the same. I don't necessarily mind the use of celebrities when it comes to presenting, and sometimes the results are surprising. I remember a few raised eyebrows when Alan Titchmarsh was appointed to Radio 2, but he was revelatory, a soothing son of the soil who not only offered authority, but also knew when to listen. The death of radio has been greatly exaggerated. The latest Rajar figures shows that Britain's biggest radio stations – Heart and Radio 2 – still attract audiences of 13.4 million and 13.1 million listeners, while a record number of people who actually listened to radio in the UK was reported to have risen to more than 50 million last year, apparently the biggest increase in 75 years. This is a cause for celebration, but it should also offer the opportunity to take stock, and think about what makes the medium great – and that's not the witterings of an influencer who is a brand ambassador for fake cheese.
Daily Mail
17 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
TEAMSHEET: Can YOU name the Chelsea team that beat Man United 5-0 in 1999? Or pick YOUR team and guess their starting XI
Welcome back to Teamsheet... Mail Sport's original football memory game with a twist that gives you the chance to test your football knowledge against your mates. Today, we're taking you back to the 1999-2000 campaign for the clash between Chelsea and Man United - where Gianluca Vialli's side ran riot at Stamford Bridge. Sir Alex Ferguson 's Red Devils would go on to clinch the Premier League title but, today, we want to see whether you can name the Chelsea line-up from the day. It's just for fun, so see how you fare and share your Teamsheet score... full instructions on how to play are at the bottom of the article and in the game itself. And you can also pick any team you like and guess their starting XI. Best of luck! HOW TO PLAY The aim of the game is to score as few points as possible! If you guess a player at the first attempt you score one point - so the lowest score for guessing every player at the first attempt is 11. Guess a correct letter in the right position, and it'll turn green. Guess a correct letter but in the wrong position, and it'll turn yellow. You have six guesses for each player - and if you fail, we'll reveal their identity for 11 points! You can also ask for a free letter, but it costs you a point. So play on to see if you'll score the best possible total of 11 - or fail on every player and score 121.
The Guardian
22 minutes ago
- The Guardian
English-speaking countries more nervous about rise of AI, polls suggest
People in English-speaking countries including the UK, US, Australia and Canada are more nervous about the rise of artificial intelligence than those in the largest EU economies, where excitement over its spread is higher, new research suggests. A global split over what has been dubbed 'the wonder and worry' of AI appears to correlate with widely divergent levels of trust in governments to regulate the fast-developing technology. The polling of 23,000 adults in 30 countries, shared exclusively with the Guardian by Ipsos Mori, also showed a quarter of people globally still do not have a good understanding of what AI is, despite it being widely described as the most transformative technology in decades. On Wednesday, Abba's Björn Ulvaeus revealed he was writing a musical with the assistance of AI, describing it as 'like having another songwriter in the room with a huge reference frame'. Britons appear to be among the world's most worried people about the rise of AI, with two-thirds of people in Great Britain saying they are nervous about the technology being deployed in products and services, and less than half trusting the UK government to regulate AI responsibly. By contrast half or less than half of people in France, Germany and Italy said products and services using AI made them nervous. 'In the Anglosphere (US, Great Britain, Canada and Ireland and Australia) there is much more nervousness than excitement,' said Matt Carmichael, a senior vice-president at Ipsos Mori. 'In European markets we see less nervousness, but also just a mid-range of excitement. Some markets are much more positive than nervous, especially in south-east Asia.' Only Americans, Japanese people and Hungarians trust their governments less to regulate AI than Britons. The UK government recently delayed a bill intended to regulate AI companies in order to align itself with the stance of Donald Trump's administration in the US. Trust in government regulation is lowest in the US, where the president's election campaign was bankrolled by Silicon Valley technology oligarchs including Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and he recently proposed a bill preventing new state-led regulations of AI. By contrast last June, the European Union passed the bloc-wide EU AI Act, which bans AI that poses an 'unacceptable risk', for example, systems used for social scoring, and requires systems to declare when AI has been used to manipulate or generate content. People in India, where the use of misleading AI-generated deepfake videos marked last year's general election campaign, are also among the most nervous about AI being used in products and services. The polling also revealed widespread opposition to AI's use in creating news articles, films and adverts but an equal acceptance that AI will become the primary producer of these things anyway. The highest levels of excitement about AI were found in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand where levels of trust in government regulation were also highest. Polling in those countries was only representative of the more 'connected' urban and educated populations but it showed almost double the levels of excitement as in the whole populations of the US and Great Britain. People in Great Britain were among the most pessimistic about how AI will worsen the job market, with nearly a third fearing AI will replace them entirely at work. Globally, just 31% of people think the job market in their country will improve because of AI and 35% think it will get worse. But perception of its impact varied widely. Nearly three-quarters of people in Thailand believe it is very or somewhat likely that AI will replace their current job in the next five years, compared with only 14% who believe their job will go in Sweden and one in four in the US, Great Britain and Australia. Across all 30 countries, the polling showed very few people want AI created-online news articles, films or adverts, but most people think it is likely AI will become the primary producer of all of these things as well as making television programmes, screening job adverts and even creating realistic sports content such as tennis matches between AI-generated players. Carmichael said this could play out either with increasing public acceptance as AI-generated content becomes more widespread or alternatively a 'backlash'. Some of that resistance is currently being seen with the campaign by musicians in the UK, including Kate Bush and Elton John, for greater protections against copyright infringement by technology companies building large language models (LLMs). There have also been lawsuits in the US where novelists from John Grisham to Ta-Nehisi Coates have been suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement.
