After Oprah Winfrey’s controversial interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle dominated the news cycle, HBO host John Oliver’s comments from 2018 on the actress’ foray into the Royal Family have resurfaced, with many describing Oliver’s analysis as shockingly prophetic.
John Oliver warned Meghan of (his characterization of) the Royal Family in 2018… pic.twitter.com/wVUzt8j5Ud
— Ian G Haworth (@ighaworth) March 9, 2021
The LA Times published a piece titled “John Oliver’s prescient comments on Meghan go viral after Oprah interview,” saying that Oliver had a “feeling marrying into the royal family would be a trying experience for Meghan Markle.”
“I would not blame [Meghan] if she pulled out of this at the last minute,” Oliver told Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show” before Prince Harry and Meghan Markle married in 2018. “I don’t think you need to have just seen the pilot episode of ‘The Crown’ to get a basic sense that she might be marrying into a family that could cause her some emotional complications.”
“But this generation seems like nice people, right? They’re all nice now, right?” asked Colbert.
“They’re an emotionally stunted group of fundamentally flawed people doing a very silly pseudo-job. That’s what she’s marrying into. So I hope she likes it. It’s going to be weird for her. I would not marry into the royal family. I’m a commoner. I would not be welcomed — especially after what I’ve just said,” responded Oliver.
During the interview with Oprah Winfrey, Meghan made various unsubstantiated and noticeably vague claims of mistreatment during her brief time as a member of the Royal Family. One such claim was that a member of the Royal Family expressed “concerns” over the color of their son’s skin and “how dark the baby’s going to be potentially and what that would mean or look like.” Harry supported this claim, but refused to specify who was the alleged “offender,” saying “That conversation I’m never going to share.”
Another was that Markle’s sister-in law, Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton, made her cry in 2018, with Markle telling Winfrey that “A few days before the wedding, she was upset about something, pertaining, yes, the issue was correct about flower girl dresses, and it made me cry, and it really hurt my feelings.”
During the interview, Meghan also blamed racism for her son not receiving a title, and compared herself to Ariel in The Little Mermaid.
“I was sitting in Nottingham Cottage and The Little Mermaid came on. And who as an adult really watches The Little Mermaid? But it came on, and I was like, ‘Well, I’m just here all the time so may as well watch this.’ And I went, ‘Oh, my God, she falls in love with a prince, and because of that she has to lose her voice,’” Markle told Oprah.
She then added, “But by the end, she gets her voice back.”