Royal television moments

Or Humanising the Royals

Strap: Telly has helped define the modern monarchy but the two have complex ties

Britain’s royal family and television have a complicated relationship. The 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II was Britain’s first mass TV spectacle. Since then, rare interviews have given a glimpse behind palace curtains at the all-too-human family within.

The fictionalised take of Netflix hit The Crown has moulded views of the monarchy for a new generation, though in ways the powerful, image-conscious royal family can’t control.

“The story of the royal family is a constructed narrative, just like any other story,” said Phil Harrison, author of The Age of Static: How TV Explains Modern Britain. And it’s a story that has changed as Britain moved from an age of deference to an era of modern social mores and ubiquitous social media.

“The royals, particularly the younger royals, have moved from the realm of state apparatus to the realm of celebrity culture in recent decades,” Harrison said.

That’s worked well for them up to a point — but celebrity culture takes as well as gives and is notoriously fickle.

So, anticipation and apprehension are both high ahead of Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan — the Duke and Duchess of Sussex — a year after they walked away from official royal life, citing what they described as the intrusions and racist attitudes of the British media toward the duchess, who is biracial.

A clip released by CBS ahead of Sunday’s broadcast shows Meghan, a former TV star, appearing to suggest the royal family was “perpetuating falsehoods” about her and Harry.

Revisiting the past

Here is a look at some other major royal television moments, and their impact:

PRINCESS DIANA- The 1981 wedding of 32-year-old Prince Charles and 20-year-old Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul’s Cathedral was a fairy-tale spectacle watched by an estimated 750 million people around the world. Then, after the couple separated, Diana gave a candid interview to the BBC’s Martin Bashir, discussing the pressure of media scrutiny and the breakdown of her marriage. “There were three of us in that marriage,” Diana said, referring to Charles’ relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles.

The interview prompted a wave of sympathy for Diana, seen by many as a woman failed by an uncaring, out-of-touch royal establishment — a pattern some say has repeated itself with Meghan.

PRINCE ANDREW

The biggest scandal to engulf the family in decades stems from the friendship between the queen’s second son, Andrew, and wealthy convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in a New York jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

The prince tried to undo the damage by giving an interview to the BBC’s Newsnight programme in November 2019. It backfired spectacularly.

SARAH, DUCHESS OF YORK

Like Diana before her and Meghan since, Sarah Ferguson was a young woman who had a bruising collision with the royal family. She was initially welcomed as a breath of fresh air for the stuffy royals when she wed Prince Andrew in 1986. But she quickly became a tabloid target, dubbed “Freeloading Fergie” for allegedly scooping up freebies and spending more time vacationing than performing public duties.

After her 1996 divorce, the duchess used television to speak out — frequently.

THE CROWN

It may be fiction, but Netflix’s The Crown is the most influential depiction of the royals in years.

Over four seasons that have covered Elizabeth’s reign up to the 1980s, its portrait of a dutiful queen, prickly Prince Philip, oversensitive Prince Charles and the rest of the clan has brought the royal soap opera to a new generation.

It is widely seen as helping the royals by humanising them, though British Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden suggested it should come with a warning that it’s drama, not history. (AP)