Prince Harry and Meghan Markle getting “annoyed” at grownup animated comedy South Park‘s spoofing can be “completely self-destructive,” based on a brand new episode of Newsweek‘s The Royal Report podcast.
The royal couple discovered themselves the goal of considered one of South Park‘s legendary take-downs within the second episode of its twenty sixth season, which aired on February 15, titled “The Worldwide Privacy Tour.”
The pair had been spoofed because the “Prince and Princess of Canada” characters who transfer to the city of South Park after leaving the monarchy and are proven to repeatedly profess a want for privateness in public methods.
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The episode was extensively shared on-line, with many commentators and social media accounts utilizing clips to mock or communicate derogatively in regards to the royals. However, for the couple to take this too severely can be misjudged, Newsweek‘s chief royal correspondent, Jack Royston, informed The Royal Report.
“It touches on several things that probably will in all honesty be cutting to Harry and Meghan,” he stated.
“One is that they describe Meghan as [the prince’s] ‘B-word wife.’ Now, Meghan did a whole [Archetypes] episode on the b-word in which she refused to say the b-word […] But essentially she said it was a sexist trope used to hold women back, and the fact that they’ve kind of just straightforwardly referred to her using this word is probably not going to go down all that well.”
Meghan’s Archetypes podcast launched in August 2022 and the royal said that her intention via the sequence was to “dissect, explore, and subvert the labels that try to hold women back.”
Meghan herself mentioned using the “b-word” and the derogatory connotations is had when used towards ladies on an episode of the present final November.
The use of the “b-word” will not be the one a part of the South Park roast that the Sussexes will take difficulty with.
“They also repeat some of the kinds of tropes that you get a little bit of on social media, particularly on TikTok. When [the characters] are on the Canadian talk show, Harry is talking and Meghan kind of cuts him off,” Royston defined. “So there probably are a couple of things that will sting a little bit.”
After the present aired, hypothesis arose as as to whether Harry and Meghan would sue the present for its illustration of them. They weren’t really named, however the hyperlink was apparent to viewers.
The couple have since denied that they’re contemplating authorized motion, with a spokesperson telling Newsweek that the suggestion was “baseless and boring.” How they react total, nevertheless, may sign an essential stage of their public growth, Royston supplied.
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“One would hope that they have enough perspective to also see the funny side and just kind of take it in the spirit it was intended, in fact I think it’s really important that they do try as hard they possibly can to see the funny side and to not get upset about it,” he stated.
“You just can’t get annoyed with South Park. They have been so kind of wantonly insensitive for so long and it’s also such an obvious parody that there’s just no point in getting annoyed. It would be completely self-destructive to do so.”
Harry and Meghan aren’t the one members of the British royal household to have been spoofed by South Park previously. After Prince William married Kate Middleton, the present did a parody royal marriage ceremony episode, although the characters weren’t as intently based mostly on the actual life couple as within the Sussexes’ case.
Queen Elizabeth II was additionally spoofed in a previous episode and Princess Diana was featured in a Christmas themed present.
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek’s royal reporter based mostly in London. You can discover him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and skim his tales on Newsweek’s The Royals Facebook web page.
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