Western Morning News (Saturday)
Wales’s shrug off woes to focus on Earthshot
THE Prince and Princess of Wales spent yesterday preparing for the Earthshot Prize being staged last night in Boston, US.
William’s environmental awards were due to have singer Billie Eilish leading a stellar entertainment lineup during a ceremony – dubbed the prince’s “world cup” moment – that aims to celebrate and scale up environmental solutions to repair the planet.
Former England and Manchester United footballer David Beckham was due to present one of the five awards, with each category winner receiving £1 million to develop their project.
Ahead of the event being staged on Friday evening at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway, the prince was due to meet US President Joe Biden during a visit to the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
But the couple’s three-day trip to Boston, which ended yesterday, has been overshadowed by the race row that saw William’s godmother Lady
Susan Hussey resign as a royal aide after she repeatedly questioned a prominent black British-born domestic abuse charity boss about where she “really came from”.
And a trailer promoting the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Netflix docu-series was released on Thursday, with the timing interpreted by some royal commentators as a snub to William and Kate.
A black-and-white image released of Kate before the awards, shows her in silhouette walking across the stage of the theatre as an image of a cloudfilled sky is projected behind. In another image, William is photographed laughing as he chats to someone off-camera, with broadcast equipment in the background of the picture. Organisers of Earthshot have implemented a number of green policies, from encouraging guests to dress sustainably, from wearing vintage clothing or recycling outfits for future use, to ensuring the plants and flowers on display are grown locally.
Celebrities again walked a green – not red carpet, the same used for last year’s inaugural ceremony, and it will be recycled after the event; make-up used was predominantly vegan or certified cruelty free, and all the food served was set to be plant based. On Thursday, the prince remained focused on his Earthshot prize as he met budding environmental tech entrepreneurs at Greentown Labs near Boston and issued a warning, saying: “For all of us the time is ticking.”
As he chatted to some of last year’s award finalists William praised them for their ground-breaking work, adding: “As time goes by I keep saying: ‘Come on, we’ve got to move faster and faster.”’
The prince’s estranged brother, the Duke of Sussex, and his wife were not expected to attend the environmental awards, but on the second day of the Waleses’ first overseas trip since the death of the Queen, the trailer for Harry and Meghan’s Netflix
docu-series was released. The one-minute film featured neverbefore-seen private photographs of the couple, who live in California, and in one section of the footage, Meghan appears to be wiping away tears while Harry sits and tilts his head right back, seemingly in distress.
A Kensington Palace spokesman reiterated comments made ahead of the trip that the Waleses would not be “distracted” by other things this week, and their focus was on meeting communities and local people across the city.