Over the past few years, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have seemingly begun to think of themselves as TV stars.
In 2022, they produced a blockbuster Netflix ‘docuseries’ about their dramatic break-up from the Royal Family, a documentary in 2023 about the Invictus Games, a show in 2024 about polo, and a cookery show which is due out in March this year.
But the show which perhaps had the biggest impact on their lives is the one they didn’t help to make.
On February 15, 2023, the royal couple starred in their very own episode of the acclaimed animated sitcom South Park.
The episode, titled The Worldwide Privacy Tour, referred to the couple’s plea for privacy – just after Harry had finished his press tour for his tell-all memoir Spare and a few months after their revealing Netflix show was aired.
It poked fun at the couple’s grievances and behaviour, with Meghan cuttingly being introduced by one character as a ‘sorority girl, actress, influencer, victim’.
The 22-minute episode was watched by millions, hitting the global headlines for its mercilessly mocking and ridiculing of the couple.
But despite its jokey nature, the show did real damage to the couple’s reputation in the US, which had always been more positive than in the UK.
A poll carried out a few days after the show, by US website Newsweek, showed that the prince’s popularity in America had dropped three per cent since the previous month – while Meghan’s fell by four per cent.
Here we look back at when South Park went to war with Harry and Meghan – and reveal why it may have been the beginning of the end for their popularity in the US.
Harry and Meghan pictured in the satirical show South Park in an episode titled The Worldwide Privacy Tour
The outfit worn by Meghan for Trooping the Colour in London in 2018 resembles the one sported by the cartoon character in South Park
Perhaps sensing that the American mood had turned against Harry and Meghan following their controversial book, TV shows and podcasts, South Park began working on an episode aimed at bursting their bubble.
Its creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are the highest-paid entertainers in Hollywood, according to Forbes, and have built up a reputation for fearlessly parodying and satirising the rich and powerful.
Episodes of the Comedy Central series are created at speed, which allows them to rapidly respond to gossip and global events with timely filth and fury.
The Harry and Meghan episode would quickly become one of the most famous.
Inside the Worldwide Privacy Tour episode
Although its characters often bear a resemblance to famous faces, South Park begins every episode with a disclaimer saying that all its characters are fictional.
But while Harry and Meghan’s names are never mentioned in the episode, there can be no doubt about who the characters are.
The couple on the show are very similar to the real-life pair – down to one shown in the same dusty pink outfit which Meghan wore for Trooping the Colour in 2019.
Referred to as the ‘Prince and Princess of Canada’, the characters are seen at a large state funeral, where they are booed by the rest of the Royal Family after being accused of knocking the Canadian monarchy.
The episode came just after Prince Harry wrapped up the press tour for his memoir Spare
The episode begins with ‘the Prince and Princess of Canada’ attending the Queen of Canada’s funeral. The late monarch bore a striking resemblance to Queen Elizabeth II
Against the backlash, the couple appear on breakfast television to demand their privacy.
Arriving on the set of Good Morning Canada with a book to promote, the prince holds a placard saying ‘We want privacy’, while the princess’s banner reads: ‘Stop looking at us.’
The host asks whether, in reporting on the Royal Family for his new book, Waaagh, the ‘prince’ has now become a journalist himself despite hating them.
‘We just want to be normal people – all this attention is so hard,’ he replies.
The couple are challenged by the host, who questions how sincerely they want privacy, and the pair storm off the set.
They board their private jet and embark on a worldwide ‘We want privacy’ tour, complete with dancing rainbows and a catchy theme tune.
The pair visit France and India, where they chant their pro-privacy slogans to bemused locals – and even a field of kangaroos during a pit stop in Australia.
Eventually, they settle in the quiet town of South Park, Colorado, claiming: ‘If we moved here, people would think we’re really serious about wanting to be normal.’
The prince and princess arrive on the set of Good Morning Canada holding placards
The couple’s placards state ‘We want our privacy!!’ and ‘Stop looking at us!’
The couple become enraged when the host questions whether their book, interviews and Netflix show undermined their quest for privacy
The prince of Canada has written a memoir called Waaagh. It bears a striking resemblance to Harry’s book Spare
Deciding Canada offers them no future, the prince and princess embark on their Worldwide Privacy Tour
The couple board their private jet, holding their placards
But the royals quickly clash with the locals, arriving with a drum kit and demanding that their neighbours give them privacy.
The character Kyle wakes up one morning to find the house has been covered with magazines featuring the princess.
They include a cover which strongly resembles one from The Cut magazine when it featured an interview with Meghan last summer.
When Kyle confronts the royals, the princess yells: ‘He victimised me!’
The prince then springs to his wife’s defence. ‘This is an outrage!’ he cries. ‘We’ll see how he deals with my blue penis!’
The joke was a not-too-subtle reference to Harry’s frostbitten penis, which he detailed in his memoir Spare.
‘Harry and Meghan’ then turn to a crudely named marketing agency for help in protecting their privacy.
But inside the agency, the prince has a lightbulb moment and realises that he doesn’t want to be a brand.
The couple land in France, looking for a place to settle – but don’t stick around for long
Bemused Parisians looked on as the couple chant: ‘We want our privacy!!’
Back on their private jet, with their options exhausted, the couple decide to land in South Park
The couple climb down from their private jet, declaring: ‘If we moved here, people would think we’re really serious about wanting to be normal’
The prince and princess move into a house opposite the character Kyle and soon make their presence known
The pair stage noisy privacy protests with their house sporting a banner reading: ‘Leave us alone’
After clashing with the couple, Kyle arrives home to find his house plastered with magazine covers featuring the Princess of Canada. One is very similar to an edition of The Cut magazine which featured the Duchess of Sussex
Fans went on Twitter to praise South Park’s creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone
‘Trying to make ourselves into a brand just turned us into products,’ the Canadian prince declares.
‘No more magazines and Netflix shows, we can just live a normal life!’
He stands to leave and walks towards the door – but his wife remains inside the branding company.
‘Come on honey, we don’t need this place!’ he says, adding: ‘Honey?’ The prince then leaves alone.
Kyle rejoins his friends, who invite him out to play. The prince arrives and asks if he can play, too, before bringing out his drum kit.
The verdict from experts: ‘Lethally brilliant’ and ‘cruel’
Following the episode, royal commentator and expert Richard Fitzwilliams said that the Sussexes should be ‘very concerned’ as the show ‘went for the jugular’.
He said: ‘Harry and Meghan are obsessed with being in control of the narrative and we’ve recently seen them attack the Royal Family over a period of weeks when they knew the response would be silence.
‘The sight of a cartoon version of Harry and Meghan storming off a television show after the interviewer criticises them, for chanting “We want privacy”, sums up their hypocrisy and is hilarious.
Mr Fitzwilliams said the Sussexes had shown they could ‘dole it out’ but now faced the challenge of ‘laughing at themselves’.
After the episode aired, Piers Morgan (left) and Daily Mail columnist Amanda Platell (right) described the episode as painful for the Sussexes
A small detail in the South Park episode which described Meghan as a ‘sorority girl, actress, influencer, victim’
Broadcaster Piers Morgan tweeted: ‘The South Park rinsing of Meghan and Harry is lethally brilliant… suspect this is how most Americans now feel about them.’
While Daily Mail columnist Amanda Platell said that the episode was ‘excoriating’.
She added: ‘Though no fan of Meghan, even I thought the cruelty went too far in places.
‘But satirical comedy doesn’t work unless it has some element of truth.
‘Whatever their plans were to conquer the States, the Megs and Harry show is spectacularly backfiring. South Park didn’t just lampoon the Sussexes, it harpooned them.’
Harry and Meghan’s spokesman criticises speculation that they are planning to sue South Park, saying it is ‘boring and baseless’
Six days after the episode aired, Harry and Meghan finally broke their silence and responded.
Reports had previously surfaced suggesting that Meghan had been left ‘upset and overwhelmed’ by the couple’s portrayal.
Another source told The Spectator that the couple had ‘refused’ to watch the entire episode.
The reputational fallout from the show was so bad that one royal commentator claimed that the Sussexes’ lawyers were ‘casting an eye’ over the episode.
A spokesman for Harry and Meghan criticised speculation that they were planning to sue South Park, saying the rumours were ‘boring and baseless’
However, a spokesperson for Harry and his wife criticised speculation that they were planning to sue South Park over the episode, telling Newsweek that the rumours were ‘boring and baseless’.
The statement did not address claims that the couple’s lawyers would be monitoring the show to see whether South Park’s creators launch any fresh attacks on the pair in the future.
No comment was made in response to claims that Meghan had been left ‘upset and overwhelmed’ by the couple’s depiction.
In the two years since the episode was broadcast, the couple have not mentioned it publically.
South Park creators showed no fear of lawsuits after its long history of controversy
After facing so many lawsuits over the years, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone said they were no longer frightened of them.
Over the show’s 26 seasons, they have faced opposition from religions including Christianity and Islam as well as climate change deniers, supporters of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and paedophiles.
One of the episodes which attracted the most legal worries came after the 2005 Trapped in the Closet and Coming Out of the Closet episode. This was linked to Tom Cruise and his association with the Church of Scientology.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone have said they have had so many complaints that the pair ‘can’t remember’ them all after 26 years of writing the Comedy Central show
Since the Peabody Award-winning show’s first episode in the US in 1997, Parker and Stone have been pushing the boundaries of what is legally possible
Since the Peabody Award-winning show’s first episode in the US in 1997, Parker and Stone have blurred the boundary between good taste and bad – even more so than cartoon The Simpsons.
South Park even had a character resembling Jesse Jackson insist on having his rear end kissed by character Kyle’s dad to apologise for his use of a racial slur and depicted Jesus Christ defecating on former president George W. Bush and the US flag.
One common target is pontificating celebrities. A character based on U2’s Bono was portrayed as the world’s largest turd.
While recent shows have ridiculed political correctness, gentrification and advertising, the show has been very broad in who and what it satirises over its 26 seasons.
Routine characters based on the Mormons – the creators also wrote the hit musical The Book Of Mormon – have been criticised by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Its portrayal of different religious and social communities has drawn backlash from across the political spectrum.
The rest of the entertainment world begins to turn on Harry and Meghan
Despite weathering the storm from the South Park episode, things did not improve for Harry and Meghan. If anything, they got worse.
Nine months later, in October 2023, Seth McFarlane’s Family Guy featured them in one of its episodes.
The main character, Peter Griffin, compared himself to the royal couple, saying to his friends in a bar that he’ll ‘go it alone’ – just like the Sussexes – while thinking of ways to retrieve some money he is owed.
Harry and Meghan were also the target of Family Guy in 2023
The scene then cuts away to the pair lounging by the pool in their swimwear while a butler waits on them to hand them ‘millions from Netflix’.
Harry and Meghan appear in the show as work-shy grifters who post Instagram photos worth $250,000 and earn Netflix cash for ‘no one knows what’.
It is not known if the episode touched a nerve with Harry. He admitted in his 2023 memoir that he and his friends would watch the sitcom after smoking weed at Eton.
He wrote: ‘I felt an inexplicable bond with Stewie, prophet without honour.’ Stewie is a highly precocious toddler with devious and violent tendencies.
The Family Guy bloq came just months after the couple were criticised by podcaster Bill Simmons who worked with them during their short stint at Spotify.
In June 2023, he referred to the couple as ‘grifters’, adding: ‘I have got to get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to try and help him with a podcast idea. It’s one of my best stories. F*** them. The grifters.’
The criticism of Harry would continue, with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex becoming the butt of jokes at the Golden Globes in January 2024.
Golden Globes host Jo Koy roasted Harry and Meghan in 2024 when he said the couple were being paid ‘millions of dollars for doing absolutely nothing – and that’s just by Netflix’
Host Jo Koy roasted them in front of an audience of A-listers when he said the couple were being paid ‘millions of dollars for doing absolutely nothing – and that’s just by Netflix’.
The comment was met with huge laughs from the auditorium, including one from Netflix’s chief executive Ted Sarandos.
At the time, royal expert Phil Dampier said the ridicule by showbusiness showed how far the couple had fallen since their days in The Firm.
He wrote: ‘A couple of years ago Harry and Meghan would not have been humiliated in this way but they are now the butt of jokes, even among the woke luvvies of Hollywood.
‘When you become figures of ridicule you are in trouble.
‘When they first moved to America they were a popular couple but people have seen through them and are fed up with their constant moaning.
‘This is the latest of a growing list of mickey takes out of them, following on from South Park and other shows.
‘They expect criticism from the press and social media, but attacks from the showbiz world show how far they have fallen.’
In 2024, Royal expert Phil Dampier said the ridicule by showbusiness showed how far Harry and Meghan had fallen since their days in The Firm
Perhaps Harry and Meghan could have dealt with the fallout from the South Park show by simply laughing off the episode.
The Mirror’s royal editor Russell Myers told Australia’s Today show that their response was a perfect example of why South Park had made fun of them in the first place.
He said: ‘They’ve given the [story] publicity and come out and released a statement.
‘I think the only two people who have been “boring” is them for not having a bit of a laugh.
‘We’ve been here before. They’re not the two people who like a joke.’
Myers then cited a quote from actor George Clooney, who is a longtime fan of South Park and once voiced a character on the show.
Clooney said: ‘You’re not anyone unless you have been in South Park. To which Myers added: ‘I think they should… just have a bit of a laugh. It is rather funny.’
