On Monday, the late-night hosts (sans Trevor Noah, who is sadly off this week) all addressed the news that captivated 17 million Americans: Oprah Winfrey’s primetime interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who exited the British royal family over what the two characterized as a campaign of gaslighting, neglect, and racist treatment. Jimmy Kimmel mocked the royal family’s “inbreeding” past, while Stephen Colbert began his riff on a slightly more playful note.
Of the portion of the interview where Markle alleged that she’d never looked up Harry online (yeah, right!), the Late Show host cracked, “What! Let me introduce you to this thing called Google. Over there, I think it’s called ‘Lorry.’ It’s full of useful information—for instance, it turns out your husband knew Princess Di. That might’ve been a hint that this was going to be a rough gig.”
Then the kicker: “Also, while you’re googling, you might want to try the combo ‘Andrew,’ ‘Island,’ and ‘Epstein.’ It’ll give you an idea what the royal family is OK with.”
Colbert was of course referring to Prince Andrew, the Queen of England’s supposed favorite son. Virginia Roberts Giuffre alleged that the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficked her to the prince at least three times, charges that Andrew has denied, while a former employee of Epstein’s has claimed he saw Andrew “grinding” with a topless girl on Epstein’s Little St. James—a private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands dubbed “Pedophile Island.”
Whereas Prince Harry was stripped of his military titles upon stepping down from his royal duties, Prince Andrew has been allowed to keep his titles despite also stepping back from royal duties following the Epstein allegations. Buckingham Palace has failed to conduct an investigation into Andrew over it and instead has been pursuing a dubious “bullying” case against Markle.
Later on in the Oprah interview, Markle said members of Harry’s family had “concerns and conversations about how dark [Archie’s] skin might be when he was born.” (Harry corroborated the claim.) That caused a stunned Oprah to exclaim, “What?!”
“I agree. What?! And let me just add, huh?!” added Colbert. “I’m gonna go out on a limb here that there is a possibility—just a possibility, mind you—that this medieval selective-breeding program might be… racist?”
“Also, it’s never good when the British ruling class thinks someone is too dark,” he continued. “They steal their land and make them play cricket.”
