Prince Harry said Saturday that he didn’t feel like a “victim” and hinted that he never “looked for sympathy” during an interview with a trauma expert after he and his wife Meghan Markle were recently mocked South Park.
The Duke of Sussex spoke to Dr. Gabor Maté to promote his memoir. spare partWeeks after the animated TV series parodied the book in an episode that featured the “Prince and Princess of Canada” on a “worldwide privacy tour.”
The show’s creators featured the prince looking and dressed like Harry and released a memoir called Wow. South Park also portrayed the prince and princess taking advice from a PR expert whose branding strategies all suggested his clients presented themselves as victims.
“Well, I certainly don’t see myself as a victim. I am truly grateful to be able to share my story in the hope it will help empower and encourage others,” Prince Harry said during Saturday’s online seminar. “And hopefully you’ll make people understand that again, back to the human experience that we’re all connected in some way, particularly through trauma. But no, I don’t, and I’ve never sought sympathy.”
The couple did not argue South Park during the interview, but Harry’s words have clear implications for the way he was portrayed in the episode.
The show mocked Harry and Markle for asking for privacy while discussing their personal lives. On the show, a Canadian interviewer asks the Prince of Canada, “Isn’t it true, sir, that your questionable wife has her own TV show and hangs out with celebrities and does fashion magazines?”
The host added: “Well I just think some people might say your Instagram loving b**** wife doesn’t actually want her privacy.”
Markle was also described on the show as a “sorority girl, actress, influencer, victim” by a brand management consultant.
news week reached out to Comedy Central for comment.
Elsewhere during the virtual Q&A hosted by publisher Penguin Random House, Maté told Harry that his book was a “history of deprivation” of the emotional rather than the physical kind, and highlighted the lack of hugs in the royal upbringing.
“The father himself [King Charles III] was born mercilessly as a child or ridiculed for his best qualities, sensitivity and intellectual interest where people are not held and hugged,” Maté said. “You know, animals hug their children.”
Harry replied, “It’s the first thing we do as parents when you have a child, skin to skin.”
Maté also suggested that he believes Harry may have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), prompting Harry to reply, “Thanks for the free session.”
The prince spoke about his desire to give his children Archie and Lilibet a different life than the upbringing he had as king.
“It puts me in the position of a father who has two kids trying to smother them with love,” he said. “I feel a great responsibility not to share any trauma or negative experiences I had as a child or as a growing man. There are times I catch myself when I should be smothering her with that love, but maybe not.”
