Why we can’t get enough of the explosive Royal tell-all
Excitement is building ahead of Meghan and Harry’s interview, but it’s not the first royal PR stunt to transfix viewers. looks back at the family’s most unforgettable TV moments
‘Celebrities come and go, Royals are for ever. They stand apart, they stick to tradition. We want them to live in their wonderful world so that we can dream. It’s as simple as that: gilded life is lovely to observe’
Chrissie Russell
Oprah Winfrey leans back in her chair, her earnest gaze fixed on her interviewee. She’s about to ask the question everyone wants to hear: what makes someone want to leave the ‘fairytale’ of life of a Royal princess? “Why don’t you just behave yourself? Do what you’re told?” the veteran talk-show host challenges. “Just play the game and go along with the programme?”
Her guest smiles coyly. “You could do that,” she says. “If that’s what suits you.”
But a life of royal rules was not for this ex-princess. She is an independent, curious woman. Like a river longing to see what’s round the next corner, she is “hungry for life”. And there are other factors to consider.
“I must explain that the British press at the moment is completely and utterly cruel and abusive and so invasive,” reveals the oncesenior Royal to a rapt audience.
The interviewee in question is not Meghan, Duchess of Sussex but
Sarah Ferguson, and the year 1996, when the Duchess of York gave the first of what would end up being two ‘tell-all’ interviews to chatshow queen Winfrey.
In it Ferguson detailed the woes of life as an outsider in the royal family, with complaints ranging from the oppressively dark colour scheme in her Buckingham Palace apartment to not being able to open windows fully or use lightbulbs above 30 watts.
“Did you get to keep the tiara?” Winfrey asks conspiratorially. “Yes,” smiles Ferguson to beaming applause from the audience. As Winfrey well knows, this is exactly the sort of content we love from royal interviews. A behind-the-scenes glimpse that on one hand reveals them to have similar foibles to us mere mortals, while on the other renders them even further removed from reality than ever, for having the gall to gripe about petty grievances from a position of such privilege.
We’ll be hoping for more of the same when Winfrey’s 90-minute, no-holds-barred interview with the Duchess of Sussex and her husband Harry is broadcast this week — Winfrey is reported to have said it is “the best interview she’s ever done”.
In the past week,
Google Trends Ireland shows that searches for ‘Harry and Meghan’ have rocketed, with viewers no doubt keen to find out where they can catch the must-see interview on this side of the Atlantic. In just 24 hours, ‘An Afternoon with Prince Harry and James Corden’, posted to YouTube last Friday, notched up more than six million views.
We love a royal interview and always have. The infamous Panorama interview where Princess Diana revealed there were “three people” in her marriage to Prince Charles remains one of the highest viewed programmes in the history of the BBC, with an audience of 23 million tuning in.
Part of the allure comes from the fact that for the most time, the vast majority of royals seem to abhor interaction with the press. Think Prince Harry scolding Sky News’s Rhiannon Mills for daring to ask an impromptu question in Africa, Prince Charles (unaware that the microphones could detect him) gurning “I hate doing this. Bloody people” to a press pack on the ski slopes of Klosters, or indeed his father, Prince Philip, clearly fuming at a photographer to “just take the f***ing picture!” at a Battle of Britain event.
So when a royal does deign to engage with media, the hope is that they’ve something juicy to say. Or even better, that, in arrogantly believing they’re controlling their own narrative, they’ll walk head-on into an unguarded moment or full-on car-crash scenario — see Prince Andrew’s eye-watering 2019 exchange with BBC Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis.
Perhaps more interesting, though, is why Irish viewers take such an interest in the British royals. You can’t, for example, imagine such feverish excitement if Oprah was interviewing Princess Sofia of Sweden.
Mary Kenny, author of Crown and Shamrock — Love and Hate between Ireland and the British Monarchy —andan Irish Independent journalist — says that, even while politically crown forces were loathed, our interest in the personal lives of those behind the crown has always been there.
“I found women in rural Ireland had kept scrapbooks with pictures of Wallis Simpson, who was considered a role model,” she says. “In Ireland, the personal aspect was often at loggerheads with the political because the personal stories were often intriguing, and Ireland is a nation of story-tellers.”
Kenny believes that as Ireland has grown in confidence as a country, we’re more able to embrace our interest with the royals of our closest neighbours without old sensitivities around the monarchy arising.
“They are our naughty pleasure,” laughs royal commentator Noel Cunningham. “It’s a fact that, per head of the population, magazines or newspapers with stories about the royals sell better in Ireland than most countries, and have done for decades.
“I officially welcomed Prince Charles and Camilla Duchess of Cornwall to Donegal, and the excitement was palpable, warm and amazing.” Cunningham says that in the event, even those who would have had been previously openly hostile to the royal family “couldn’t wait to see them.”
“I’ve met many of the family and they retain a certain je ne sais quoi,” he says. There are very few (people) who would turn down an invite to a royal garden party… especially us Irish.”
While we might be interested in seeing inside Kim Kardashian’s monochrome home or finding out what burger an Oscar-winner eats, there’s something specific to our intrigue with royals over the consumption of mere celebrity gossip.
“Celebrities come and go, royals are for ever,” says Cunningham. “They stand apart, they stick to tradition, we know their jewels are not costume and we want them to live in their wonderful world so that we can dream. It’s as simple as that: gilded life is lovely to observe. They do the show and pageantry better than Netflix…and they do DRAMA!”
He remembers writing to Princess Diana after the Panorama interview and will of course be tuning in for the Oprah interview with Meghan and Harry, which airs on ITV on Monday evening.
“The viewership will be huge — fact — but alas after Diana the others still pale a little toward insignificance,” he says sadly, adding (perhaps prophetically). “There are no winners in such exposures, only heartache for many.”