Meghan hiding her kids’ faces is a blatant scheme_ she’ll make money from the big reveal in no time
We have to talk about Megan’s Instagram.
Um, you know, it started on January the 1st with a huge explosion, you know, and it hasn’t stopped. I honestly, genuinely, had to go to her page to make sure it had originated there because I thought it was a parody.
Four years later, deciding to share what is a very private moment for a couple—that is, the birth of a child—it kind of contradicts her early assertions about privacy. Look, I don’t know why we can’t see the children’s faces. I think, uh, so she’s obviously got some sort of scheme there where she, I don’t know, wants to monetize on them one day. In that Disneyland video, there’s a front picture of them that she’s put emojis on their faces, and that part I don’t understand. You don’t need to include that; that’s an option that’s available to you—to not put it in at all. It just feels, I’m going to say, it feels a little bit obnoxious when you do put it up there and then you’re hiding their faces.
I did an interview with Harry Malawi just about conservation and environmental issues, and he was really, really pent up. He was very stressed, and he just would talk—like with the BBC interview. You ask him one question, and he’d talk for five or six minutes. I recognized that Harry in that BBC video. That BBC interview was one of their biggest mistakes.
Welcome to Royal Exclusive this week. Is Prince William the right man to step up to the plate in the fight to save the environment? Should Megan be serving up her children on social media? And is the Duchess of Edinburgh the missing ingredient in the royal family recipe?
I’m the Sun’s royal editor, Matt Wilkinson. And with me to discuss that and much more are the Sun’s royal photographer, Arthur Edwards; news.com.au’s royal correspondent, Bronty Koy; and ITV’s royal editor, Chris Ship.
Now, Chris, we’ve traveled around the world. We’ve been to places like Singapore and Boston, and we’ve seen Prince William deliver speeches about the environment and with his Earthshot Prize. Seeing him in Monaco, speaking with, you know, with world leaders on such a huge stage, what I got from that—what I saw or heard—was almost a passing of a baton from King Charles, who delivered so many speeches as Prince of Wales about the blue economy, about saving the oceans, passing it to his son. What did you take from William in Monaco?
I thought this one was different, uh, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, yes, we’ve heard him speak about Earthshot, but that is to his own competition, if you like—the one he set up five years ago—and we’re now into the halfway stage of it. But this was a speech to world leaders, and it felt like the kind of thing that his father used to do when he was Prince of Wales. In fact, I went to a blue economy conference in Malta a few years ago and interviewed the then Prince Charles about his passion for the environment. Oceans are a big deal. We forget—it’s largely out of sight, as David Attenborough’s new film reminds us—because it’s out of sight. We don’t see the damage that we’re doing, and yet what happens in the oceans affects all of us.
And this felt like a new departure for Prince William. This was his moment—stepping up as a global statesman, as his office likes to call him. But we, uh, told that, don’t we, Chris? This is him becoming a global statesman. This is him on the world stage, and we’ve been waiting to see it. We are told that he’s now a global statesman for the last year or so. But he’s met Trump, you know, remember, in Paris he was there with Macron. We have the state visit with Macron coming up. We are actually beginning to see him almost stepping into his father’s shoes, but into the role of the Prince of Wales—that role of the heir to the throne. I mean, it is, of course, a sort of training job for the one coming down the track at some point in the future. But yes, you’re right to say that we are seeing more and more of Prince William acting as this sort of global statesman.
We’ve got big events coming up. There’s another Earthshot later this year in Brazil, and he now needs to show the difference it’s making because we’re at the halfway stage. It’s a ten-year project. We’re five years in. Also, being held in Brazil this year is the UN Climate Summit, COP. Well, we don’t know whether he’s going or not, but it’s, you know, not beyond the realm of imagination that he’ll also be at that summit.
Chris just mentioned, there we’re halfway through his decade of Earthshot, where he’s taking it around the world. He appears to be ramping up his language—or, he appears to be increasing his occasions where he actually wants to take to the stage and talk about saving the environment. This is a new thing—talking about saving the oceans with David Attenborough. How do you think he’s getting on?
I think he’s getting on really well, and I was giving this some thought recently, watching him. I think we’re seeing increasing confidence in the role of Prince of Wales because it is such a different role than the one he had before. He has had a little bit of a blueprint from his father, as you’ve mentioned, because he was speaking so passionately about the environment for so long. Seeing William now taking on this role even more—I think that, over the last few years, it’s been only a few years since the late Queen died. I do think he’s settling into the role now more than he had before, and we’re seeing the results.
Even things like last month—I think the latest YouGov poll had him at the top of the popularity list for members of the royal family. He is connecting with people in a way that makes them really respond to the work he’s doing with the environment and homelessness. And I think when he sees that being fed back—how people are reacting to it—it gives him increasing confidence to get up there and make these passionate speeches.
I was also reminded, a little bit, in this recent one, of a speech Prince Charles made a few years back when he was, sorry, when he was still Prince Charles, before he became king. He described the environment as a “last chance saloon.” And I think there was a little bit of that when we heard William, which was: this is the time. It is an urgent call to action. We’re not doing enough, basically—that’s the subtext with the comparisons between son and father.
The number of times we’ve sat there, Arthur, watching the King deliver speeches—recently in Canada, in Germany, and in France. He will use the local language as well. He did a little bit of that. William did that in this speech. He spoke the opening of the speech in French and the ending in French. It does seem a little bit of a, you know, a correlation there. It was a sentence at the beginning and a sentence at the end. So I don’t think they were pushing the sort of French bilingualism too far, let’s put it that way.
I was really impressed when the King did it in German to the Bundestag in Berlin. He also did it in France and, particularly, in Italy, because he’s not very good at Italian—or at least he was trying really hard at it. But Prince William did a single sentence at the beginning and the end—ten out of ten for effort, Prince William.
He is doing it with that high-level statesman vibe, you know—meeting Macron, meeting all these people. Prince Charles went to all the rainforests. I think I’ve been to every rainforest in the world with him three times—to the Amazon rainforest. I saw him beg, plead with these presidents to stop ripping up this precious resource. He was much more action-oriented, you know. I remember, and we’d go to a rainforest, and he’d say, “We never see any creatures here. We never see any animals here.” He said it’s because behind every tree there’s a policeman or a soldier protecting it. He said, “You know, it’s hopeless,” but he did it his way. William’s doing it his way, and probably gets more done that way.
But Charles cared so much. I was at that mortar event when he, you know, released the turtles—made a great speech. He said, “Plastic’s now on the menu because the fish are digesting the plastic.” I think that resonated with me more than anything else he said—the speech, and certainly releasing the trapped turtles after they’d been looked after. So he was more physical, like in the rainforest—you know, talking to the local people. Absolutely just caring so much. And he’s been doing it for 30, 40 years, while William is carrying on that legacy.
They’re going off to Brazil for two days and to Monaco for a day and a half. You know, I think the way the King did it was better. I think you saw he was in action. I think Prince Charles has done a great job training him. I hope William does the same with his son George—that’s his toughest job ever.
The reason why he never sees many animals is because Arthur Edwards is there, behind the hedges. There’s no animals, because—this I did see once in Borneo—when he actually exchanged a banana with a tang. That was in an area where they were trying to protect them. That was the one time I saw both in the same shot: Prince Charles and the tang. They were nailed down, those attacks, weren’t they? They weren’t going anywhere.
Yeah, it’s a really good point you made: that Prince William has been doing this for a short period, whereas Charles has been doing it for 30 or 40 years. It’s been his passion. He’s never, ever stopped. Just, you know, I can’t remember a time when he wasn’t talking about it. He was always saying, “We’ve got to do something about it. The world’s coming.”
Recently, I saw something on TV—Antarctica is melting, and the king penguins are dying. I think to myself, when are we going to wake up to this? This is happening now. Well, this is what William’s saying, I mean—are we worried at all about…
We’re always nervous about royals getting involved in politics. Surely, there’s no danger here. This isn’t party politics, is it? This is just, you know, sensible ideas.
Depends where you define politics. Like, there was a time when Princess Diana was told that getting involved in landmines was political, and I don’t think most people would agree that we’re stopping people from being blown up by landmines. How is that even possibly political?
I think there’s a consensus—apart from in the US White House—that, you know, global warming is real, and the damage is being done. We’ve had a series on ITV this week, as Arthur was just saying, about the damage in Antarctica—completely on the other side of the world—and it seems very remote, very far away from us. But what happens there will affect us all. That’s the best thing about what’s been on television lately. They’re showing the world that it’s melting and that we need to wake up now.
So, William is obviously following in his father’s footsteps. I think we’ll all agree. We can all settle on that. We might disagree on things later in the show, but let’s just be happy that we agree on this point right now.
I’m nervous—I would really disagree. But one person who seems to be emerging is the Duchess of Edinburgh. Um, Sophie. She joined William in Cornwall. I thought it was a lovely little job down there, wasn’t it, King? She joined in Cornwall. Did she join Prince William? Yeah. First disagreement—uh oh—the first disagreement. I only do that with a laugh.
We’re going to fall out. But Sophie was down in Cornwall, and she’s with the King this week. Um, she’s at Kings Award Enterprise at Windsor Castle, and she was with the King at the Royal Windsor Flower Show at the weekend. It’s good to see her out and about, isn’t it? I mean, but my theory on this is that we do have a shrinking number of working royals. Currently, we have the King and Queen, and we have the Wales. The Yorks are excommunicated. The Sussexes have disappeared. We don’t really have many working royals anymore.
We need Sophie and Edward. What are your thoughts about seeing her emerge this week? We never think—you can never have too many royals, more than when you think back to a few years ago, and imagine Buckingham Palace balcony when the late Queen and Prince Philip were still around—and there was a very crowded balcony. Now, it’s as you say—there’s really just the two households front and center. And after the events of last year, when a couple of them were out of commission for a while, we really felt it.
That’s when we saw the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh really step up. And I always feel, when we see these pictures of Sophie out on engagements—or, in this case, the one with William, which was so much fun—the two of them joking about having a drink together. They have this easy banter. You can tell they get along. When you see her out and about engaging with people, it’s always a really, uh, easy thing to watch her do. She does it with such ease. She connects well with people. And you wonder why we don’t see more of her, because, exactly as you say, there’s space for it.
So I think there’ll be more of that in the future, especially as the Wales move up through the ranks. Down the line, whenever that is, because I think the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh have a really good way of, sort of—and, not to sound ageist at all—but to broaden the demographic of appeal for the royals. You’ve got, uh, those in their 40s, and then others in their 70s. Yeah. Uh, Sophie and Edward are sort of in the middle, and people really like them—they work very hard.
Well, they’re seasoned professionals as well. They’ve been doing this for a long time. They were doing this way before the Sussexes arrived, to be honest. You know, long before Meghan arrived. Sophie, Sophie and Edward were doing lots of great work. What do you think they bring? Well, she’s not afraid to—just—uh, to finish that thought, she’s not afraid to tackle tough issues. We’ve seen Sophie really get out there in some of the more taboo conversations, you know, and she goes into war-torn countries, speaking about sexual violence and other difficult topics. It’s extremely challenging, but it’s something she’s never shied away from. And I think that’s what she can really bring to the table.
And again, I think people respond well when they see it. I want to see more of it. Yeah, she’s a lovely person, too—and a joy to photograph. But for some reason, newspapers and TV don’t publish or run those stories. They don’t go to India when she visits, or to Malawi, or elsewhere. It just seems that all the good work she does goes unreported.
I wonder if part of that is the fault of the palace, because I don’t think they often tell us in advance where she’s going. They only tell us once she’s already there, which doesn’t help when you’ve got to dispatch cameras halfway around the world. I agree—you know, she does some fantastic work in the Middle East and Africa, helping children suffering from, you know, potential blindness in adulthood. Yes, she could do a lot more. I think she is a real asset, and it’s beholden on Buckingham Palace to put her out there more—if, of course, that’s what she wants.
I completely agree. When I started covering this job, there were so many households—so many—that you kind of lost count. You didn’t really need the Sussexes, as they were then, nor the Edinburghs, as they are now. But now, it feels a little thin on the ground. And their kids, too—you know, I was thinking about this. We’ve got George, Charlotte, and Louis. There is no doubt they will be on the world stage when the time comes. People are already very engaged in watching them.
But there are many years before they need to be working royals. They’re quite young. George is still 11. So, you look at the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh’s children: Lady Louise is 21, and James is 17. I don’t believe either of them is taking an HR title. I don’t know what interest they have in becoming working royals, but we saw the late Queen bring in her cousins when she was queen, and they helped out on engagements.
And I think we could see that possibly down the line, when William becomes king—he might call in those cousins, because they’re at an appropriate age to help out with royal duties. Well, it’s a sensible move, I think. You’ve raised a good point—bringing in Lady Louise, who will be graduating this summer. She’s one of the cleverest royals. I mean, she’s a straight-A student, gone to university, and is doing very well there. She could be a big asset.
What do you think about the Edinburgh children maybe stepping up in the future? I think it depends if they want to, and I believe it has to be led by them—that there’s no point in the institution, the “gray suits” as Meghan called them, forcing them to do something they don’t want to. But if that’s what they want, there’s definitely space for them. And I think we’ve seen, particularly with Lady Louise, who was a shy teenager, how she’s grown in confidence over the years. When we see her at big public engagements, she looks much more confident now.
Sophie has always been called the “secret weapon,” hasn’t she? And I can see her as a potent, perhaps even secret, asset—no one knows about her, so we hardly see her in the papers. That’s how secret she is.
Yeah. Lady Louise could be, you know, that person who steps up. I’m just wondering whether the House of Edinburgh could, at some stage, replace the House of Sussex. I mean, not replace entirely, but perhaps serve as an additional resource for Buckingham Palace. Yes, of course. Um, I mean, Prince Edward—the…
