55% in the UK vow to skip Oprah telly tell-all
The loyal subjects of Queen Elizabeth II won’t get to see the full broadcast of Oprah Winfrey’s two-house interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry until Monday evening UK time — 19 hours after it airs in the US. But many Brits, it seems, won’t even bother.
A recent poll by The Sun found that 55 percent won’t tune in. And a survey by YouGov revealed 46 percent of Britons think it’s inappropriate for the couple to do a bombshell tell-all less than a year after their April 1, 2020, Megxit.
“I won’t watch. It’s blatant disrespect to the monarchy,” one mixed-race woman from Manchester, England, told The Post. (She asked to withhold her name for fear of being trolled by Meghan supporters.) “It’s pre-planned from years ago and it’s her end game.”
She’s referring to the duchess’s recollection, in one of the released clips, of telling Oprah in 2018 that she might later consider a conversation with the media maven at “the right time.”
The will-you-watch surveys were carried out before news broke that Harry’s 99-year-old grandfather, Prince Philip, had undergone heart surgery Wednesday at a London hospital — another reason why Brits think the timing is inappropriate. (The Duke and Duchess of Sussex told the Daily Mail that it is up to CBS, not them, when to air the special.)
“The British public are horrified by the interview,” Ingrid Seward, author of “Prince Philip Revealed” and editor-in-chief of “Majesty” magazine, told The Post. “The mere thought of these two incredibly privileged people sitting in the California sunshine moaning about their lot does not appeal.
“People have been dying, Britain is in lockdown and we’re in the worst financial crisis we’ve ever had. It’s really so much better to say nothing if you’re dissatisfied.”
In other words, follow the monarchy’s famous old-school motto: “Never complain, never explain.”
Seward’s views are shared by Wesley Kerr, a former BBC court correspondent and the first Black reporter to be hired by the corporation.
Noting that Meghan and Harry are “launching themselves on the West Coast celeb circuit, which is their right,” he told The Post: “I suppose they need to differentiate their untested brand.”
Kerr added: “There are other, more enduring values on this side of the pond. I’m not sure that what’s claimed in California is always central to the British national conversation.”
There are plenty of other people of color in Blighty who have issues with the Sussexes — especially when they call out racism in Britain.
The anonymous Mancunian said that around 70 percent of her black friends “started off loving [Harry and Meghan], but got tired of the drama very quickly.”