Not long after his 2018 remarks on Meghan Markle went viral for appearing to predict troubles she would face with the royal family, John Oliver weighed in on her and Prince Harry’s blockbuster CBS interview with Oprah Winfrey detailing some of the hurdles they have faced early in their marriage.
Calling the CBS interview “amazing,” the Last Week Tonight host added during an appearance on The Tonight Show on Monday, “I didn’t find any of it surprising. That is kind of what I felt like, sadly, her experience was going to be going in.” He said he drew this conclusion from simply observing the royal family from a distance while he was growing up and “they seem like flawed people. That’s literally the kindest way I could possibly put it.”
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During the March 7 interview, Markle spoke to struggling with suicidal thoughts while dealing with a demanding role in the royal family as well as aggressive tabloid coverage. She says that she requested professional help from the royal family but was denied. Markle also alleged that she heard from Harry while she was pregnant with her first child, Archie, that there had been “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.”
When The Tonight Show host Fallon asked him if anything “shocked” him about the interview, Oliver responded, “The only thing that shocked me after was that Oprah, the next day, saying ‘Harry wants to make clear it wasn’t Prince Philip being racist.’ Which made me think, really? Okay, that is actually surprising.”
As to whether the family will evolve as a result of the interview and its public response, Oliver argued that the family’s “whole selling point” is “that it doesn’t change.” He added that that selling point has since become a liability because “as years go by, you realize that not changing is not entirely a good thing because that means the times might be changing around you and you are refusing to evolve,” though he added that the family “obviously should” change with the times.
He concluded his remarks with a joke about Prince Andrew, who has come under fire for his personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. “The one person who I think has been really happy about all this has been Prince Andrew,” Oliver joked. “I’m guessing that he has been nudging the royal family: ‘Can you believe what Meghan did, huh? Can you believe it? Dragging this family’s name into disrepute, shaming us…. she has ruined our reputation, she has, right guys?'”
In 2018, Oliver told The Late Show‘s Stephen Colbert of Markle’s marriage to Prince Harry, “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.” He added of the royal family in general, “They’re an emotionally stunted group of fundamentally flawed people doing a very silly pseudo job.”
Watch Oliver’s full appearance on The Tonight Show below.
